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Technology Course Transformation Report:
The King Alfred Project:
"King Alfred's Grammar Book" and improvements to the
program
Michael Drout
English
Abstract
Student/faculty collaboration on the King Alfred project began in the summer of 1998, and the program was first used in the spring of 1999. It was a helpful addition to my Anglo-Saxon Literature class (which introduced Old English to Wheaton). Students liked the program, and used it a great deal, particularly in studying for the final, but they also discovered some flaws and pointed out some areas for improvement.
In the summer of 1999 Dave and I presented King Alfred to the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists bi-annual meeting at Notre Dame University. Several colleagues wanted to get copies of the program for use at their institutions, but when Dave and I set out to supply them we realized how complex the set-up and maintenance procedures were for King Alfred. We decided that the program needed major upgrades and simplification.
So during the winter of 1999-2000 we redesigned the program, adding sound capability (so that students could learn aurally as well a visually) and working the bugs out of the interface.
It was at this time that Rachel Kapelle, my finest student from the Anglo-Saxon class, joined the project. My conversations with colleagues in Modern Languages had convinced me that I needed a top-to-bottom integrated approach to teaching Anglo-Saxon, with a text keyed to the exercises in King Alfred and a set of specific vocabulary linked to both the text and the exercises. I was also committed to using only sentences actually attested in Old English, and thus needed to choose a set of sentences to illustrate each major grammatical concept. Rachel worked through the major collections of Anglo-Saxon prose, sorting sentences into groups (sentences with only pronouns and irregular verbs; sentences with relative clauses; sentences with strong verbs; sentences with weak adjectives, etc.), parsed them into the program's database, and compiled chapter-keyed vocabulary lists. I checked Rachel's work, made suggestions and, since I had learned that the only acceptable Old English grammar book was going out of print, wrote my own electronic grammar "King Alfred's Grammar Book." I also digitally recorded pronunciations of Old English words and sentences to go into the program and the grammar book.
By the beginning of Spring 2000 we had a complete Old English grammar text in .html format (the only OE grammar that I am aware of that begins with instruction and exercises for basic grammatical concepts in Modern English), with vocabulary for each chapter and each chapter linked to the appropriate sentences in King Alfred (although there are still some bugs to be worked out in this area). I am confident that my students in the fall of 2000 will have a better learning experience than those in the Spring of 1999, since the new instruction materials will be superior to those that I used then.
There are still improvements to be made in King Alfred. In particular, we would like to update the "intelligent agent" that tells students what exactly they should work on: it's a rather simplistic algorithm right now. We also will be working to use "cookies" to track a student's progress with the program over the course of a semester (right now each session is recorded and analyzed separately). And of course there are always minor bugs to be worked out.
In May 2000 Rachel will be working on developing more sentence/vocabulary combinations for the later chapters of the text, and I will be revising the grammar exercises. The next step will be, I hope, to extend the King Alfred technology into other ancient or modern languages. I am currently working with Hector Medina to make the King Alfred technology part of the latest Mellon grant proposal.
The King Alfred project and King Alfred's Grammar Book are available on the web at:
http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/mdrout
(simply click on the "King Alfred" icon or the "King
Alfred's Grammar Book" icon. The password and user id for
King Alfred are "demo" and "demo."
A. Pedagogical Goals:
The purpose of King Alfred is to allow me
to teach Old English as quickly as possible so that the class
is able to focus on the literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon
England in addition to the grammar and vocabulary of the language.
Since the standard grammar of Old English is now out of print,
and since the replacement grammar is, in my opinion, terrible,
I needed a better way to teach grammar to students. I also needed
a way to integrate the practice sentences programmed into King
Alfred with the instructional material (one of the biggest complaints
students had was that the material in the published grammar book
was hard to understand and not linked with the electronic materials).
Also, since some students are better at aural learning than at
visual memorization, I wanted to use the digital sound capabilities
of the world wide web to allow students to hear the words they
are trying to learn.
Finally, I wanted all the minor bugs to be worked out of the program.
B. Technological Strategies:
1). David Dudek '01 and I redesigned the database to include sound files. We also ironed out many of the minor "bugs" in the program, and we set up King Alfred so that the entire program is now contained in one set of files that can be given to another college or university on one disk.
2). Rachel Kapelle and I selected a great number of sentences in Anglo-Saxon, sorted them into categories based on the grammatical concepts required to translate each one (i.e., there is a group of sentences that are simply pronouns and irregular verbs; another that uses demonstrative pronouns as well; another that uses relative pronouns, etc.), and programmed the parsed sentences into King Alfred. Rachel also created lists of necessary vocabulary based on each group of sentences, and this vocabulary is now keyed to appropriate chapters in the grammar book.
3). I wrote a complete hypertextual grammar of Old English. This grammar does not replace the grammar help files previously written for King Alfred. Each of those files is intended to be a stand-alone help document; the new grammar takes students through the process of learning Old English step by step.
4). With help from David Dudek I designed
practice exercises for students to practice such grammar skills
as identifying parts of speech and identifying word functions
(subject, object, etc.).
C. Assessment
There has not yet been an assessment of King Alfred by students because the newest version of the program will not be used until the Fall of 2000. I have demonstrated the program at two international conferences (see below) and intend to have a version of King Alfred running at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this fall.
My assessment of the program and grammar book is that, with some additional work this summer, both will be ready for fall and both will contribute to make the Anglo-Saxon class a success. This summer I will re-format the grammar book so that it may be printed as a .pdf file by students. They will thus have a paper copy of the grammar as well as a copy on cd-rom that they can use on their own computers. The King Alfred sentences and vocabulary that Rachel and I have developed have allowed me to leapfrog other scholars who have spent from three to five years developing Old English grammars and instructional material.
My assessment of the work done and the process by which is was done is slightly less positive. I allowed Dave Dudek to become over-extended during the break and he accomplished less work than he should have (given the Wheaton fellowship he received). He made up for this lack by putting the final touches on the program immediately before the Kalamazoo conference, but I should have been a better supervisor. Rachel Kapelle really needed no supervision and did superlative work on the project.
D. Dissemination plan:
I presented the King Alfred project at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI on May 6, 2000. As a result of that presentation, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has volunteered to be a beta test site for King Alfred. I also anticipate the program being used at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, though negotiations are still underway (James Cook is a mostly IBM campus; so we need to figure out a few work-arounds for serving the files).
An article about King Alfred will appear in the latest edition of the Old English Newsletter.
Also, not directly related to this LTLC grant, but still relevant, Dave Dudek and I presented King Alfred at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists bi-annual meeting at Notre Dame University, South Bend, IN in August 1999.
It is my hope that the next stage of the
project will included collaborative work with some members of
the Modern Languages faculty in which we will use the technology
of King Alfred for instruction in other languages. I also hope
to work with Hector Medina and Jenni Lund in their Mellon Grant
application.
Last updated
on 12/06/00;
Send questions about this page to: Michael Drout
or contact Wheaton
College.