11079

11079

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

How can you talk synchronously online but asynchronously?
Satoru Shinagawa, University of Hawaii, Kapiolani Community College, Honolulu, USA, satoru@shinagawa.us

For a language course, being able to speak with a student is essential--oral tests are, thus, a must. Giving an oral test to a student in a face to face environment is easy. However, it’s hard to do in an online language course and it’s a burden to the instructor. That’s because meeting with students online synchronously takes a tremendous amount of time. For example, if the oral test takes 5 minutes in the face to face environment, the same oral test takes at least 10-15 minutes in the online environment. And it can take several days to finish an entire class since online students are not always available on the same day.

After much trial and error, the presenter has figured out a way to reduce the burden on the instructor. There’s an online tool which emulates synchronous talking asynchronously. The use of this tool not only reduced the burden on the instructor but gave flexibility for students to take the oral tests. This online tool is available at CLEAR site at Michigan State University.

The presentation will talk about how the presenter incorporated the CLEAR system into his online Japanese course, and how he reduced the burden caused by oral testing. A brief guide to how to use CLEAR will be introduced, and comments and suggestions from the students will also be introduced.

The audience will learn how an oral interview can be given in a language course. The same technique can be applied for non-language courses so instructors of other subjects who want to give oral-based assignments can learn how using CLEAR makes this possible.

Because the presenter isn’t affiliated with CLEAR, the audience will be able to learn about this tool from a user’s point of view.

All Audiences Japanese, language, onine, teaching