Ucla Cdh

UCLA Center for Digital Humanities

Practical Use of Digital Media: Heritage Language Learners and GE Courses at UCLA

CDH

Heritage Language Reading Project

Hypermedia Berlin

background

Academic Services

Labs

Course Websites

Projects

User Services

Network Services

CDH Projects Applications once a year

Project Team:

Eugene Hamai

Project Technical Coordinator

Shawn Higgins

Media Specialist

Brian Lin

Media Assistant

Heritage Language Reading Project

Heritage Language Students – a definition A student who is raised in a home where a

non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language

Limited ability to read and write the heritage language

Heritage Language Reading Project

Goals Provide on-line

multi-media materials to teach reading to students with oral proficiency in Thai and Korean

Self-paced, self-correcting exercises

HLRP: Challenges Thai and Korean are Less Commonly Taught

Languages Instructors had different pedagogical approaches Thai has fives tones, only four of which are marked--

how important to heritage learners? Technical staff did not read the languages Instructors were not used to working with technology Grant proposal (funded by Dept of Ed.) was with

minimal input from technologists

HLRP: technology

Why Flash? Hidden “requirements”:

Desire for more complicated and interactive exercises Heritage learners ARE tech-savvy audience

Cross-platform and cross-browser Font representation Exercise layout and functionality

No keyboard input – heritage students do not type in target language

Heritage Language Reading Project

the heritage site Teach, Practice, Test Beginning – Intermediate levels

Vowels & Consonants Words, Sentences Short Stories

HLRP: What we learned Get involved early: preferably when

proposal is written Be realistic: One language would have been

better Establish roles (e.g. who finds images) at

the beginning Technical staff cannot proofread a language

they do not understand PIs should sign off on grad student work

before implementing Test new material on paper—content

proofing takes time

Heritage Language Reading Project

What worked well Interactive exercises: Flash & action

scripting Student programmer who knew the

language and learned the technology Authentic content: stories about other

Heritage students Common spelling mistakes

Hypermedia Berlin

Asst. Prof. Todd Presner (Germanic)

Hypermedia Berlin Revamp a GE course using digital

technology Interdisciplinary: incorporate art history,

history, literature, architecture, film Focus on context as well as text: teach the

city in both time and place Use the site in the classroom, i.e., lecture

from it Integrate student projects

Berlin: the technologies

Need to navigate in both space and time Flash Zoomify

Hypermedia Berlin

Berlin: The Challenges

GSRs with no technical expertise Create content templates in

Dreamweaver Enlist the help of tech savvy itcs during

lab sessions Undergraduates asked: does this

class have a text? Is this a lit class? Mixture of traditional and new media

assignments

Hypermedia Berlin

Why did it work? Faculty buy-in; Presner had tried before

and was less successful We used technology that GSR could learn

to add content: opened our lab as a project workspace, spent our time teaching

We used technology that students could learn to add content

Summary Humanities scholarship has fundamentally changed:

instruction needs to keep pace Students taking humanities courses have changed

(many more come from Heritage backgrounds) Interdisciplinary courses require multi-media on

demand—not just in the lab Initially students will ask:

where’s the text? but eventually: why should we write papers when we can contribute

our own digital projects? Sometimes, we can make it work!