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MENTOR REPORT

I served as a mentor for two SuperMacLang development projects in Elementary Italian and Spanish courses by Tommasina Gabriele and Bernadette Houldsworth. Overall, it appears the computerized exercises created in SML were beneficial to the students, although one section of Italian which used Tommasina's exercises wrote mostly negative evaluations. The reason for this, Tommasina and I concur, has to do with a lack of proper support and insufficient direction on the part of the instructor, and is understandable given her lack of experience with computers. As for Bernadette's students, I only have anecdotal knowledge of her success with SML this semester, although that was positive. Mentor Report My role as mentor was not very demanding as both Tommasina and Bernadette authored their exercises with little or no help, and Jenny Lund helped with digitizing sound and movie clips. My role consisted mainly of help with file management: writing directions for turning in exercises, helping set up instructors' dropboxes on ACUNIX, and assisting with retrieval procedure. I was impressed with these exercises, and believe that their success can be attrributed to several factors: 1) the many hours put in by Tommasina and Bernadette and their pedagogical expertise. 2) The relative ease of authoring in SuperMacLang. 3) The two workshops we held on campus: the first by the creator of SML, Judith Frommer in Spring 1995, and a second last Spring--as is turns out, the "follow-up" workshop played a key role in encouraging faculty development with SML. Although some of the negative evaluations received concerned the exercises themselves, I believe some of them were due to the fact that students sometimes are annoyed when homework assignments become more challenging. Because these exercises integrate sound, graphics and text, they demand more of the student as they recreate real-life situations. To me, the positive evaluations which praised the use of native speakers and the variety of the format were more convincing than the negative ones, which placed good old written homework over computer exercises for no good reasons other than habit or comfort level. However, the negative evaluations from the other instructor and, to a lesser extent, Tommasina's students point two significant problems: 1. It was clear from the sharp contrast between Tommasina's evaluations (the majority very positive about the utility of the exercises) and the other instructor's evalutations (the opposite) that guidance and clear directions, both in writing and in-class demonstrations, make all the difference. In the future, when multiple sections are using the same software, it may be necessary for the more knowledgeable instructor (the author of the exercises) to demonstrate for all sections, perhaps in a common meeting. 2. The dropbox method of turning in SML exercises is very confusing for all involved. It must be simplified or eliminated. This was the main complaint of the students, who had trouble understanding the dropbox system (as did the instructors at first). Also, relying on the server so much for retrieval and deposit of exercises made us more vulnerable to server failures. PROPOSED SOLUTION: I will be experimenting with a new system of handing in SML exercises this semester in French 221. Using a small application developed by Kirk Anderson to e-mail the SML homework files directly to the instructor, we may be able to eliminate the dropbox system altogether. It means added software to install. But by creating an "Installer" for SML and the "mail" application, this could be automated. Also, the next version of SML, due next year, will incorporate its own "mail-to" function anyway. I think the convenience of the "mail" application will eliminate most of the problems noted in this semester's evaluations. More and more students will be doing the exercises at odd hours and in ACC or their rooms. I might add to all this that my own experience using SML exercises in intermediate French has been mostly successful. I have no written evaluations to back this up. But the verbal feedback I got from my students confirmed what I consider a great advantage to the program: the exercises are always available, via the server, and students actually go back to them when in need of review. That is rarely the case with written exercises and has to do, I believe, with SML's self-correcting feature.

Last updated on 12/1/00;
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