Sessions

Practice and analyze beginner-level English conversations with a new activity plugin: the P-CHAT

This presentation introduces a new activity plugin for Moodle called “P-CHAT” (Practice Conversations as Holistic Assessment Tools). The P-CHAT plugin is a formative assessment tool that provides students with 1) an opportunity to practice conversational English, 2) immediate feedback based on hard data of their contribution, and 3) a timely opportunity to reflect on their performance with a view towards future improvement. Adapted from a formative assessment technique that has been developed over the past two years, teachers can use the plugin for student assessment and evaluation of speaking skills, and researchers can utilize a large quantity of data (e.g., audio recordings, transcriptions, student responses, quantitative analysis of speech) for investigating a variety of questions. In a P-CHAT activity, students first prepare to converse in English about a particular topic by considering target vocabulary before making an audio recording of their contribution. Once the conversation has ended, students transcribe their contributions. When students are finished transcribing, they receive immediate feedback on their oral production including total words spoken, turns taken, average turn length, longest turn length, target vocabulary used, and a comparison of their transcript against one generated using automatic speech recognition (ASR). Students complete the activity by answering a series of reflective prompts. Presenters will demonstrate the plugin by walking through each step in the student interface before highlighting teacher controls. This plugin is being developed with support by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 19K13309. It is available for download and use at no charge.

Autograding oral reading

Reading aloud in a different language is a simple activity and is useful for developing fluency and practicing pronunciation. It is also commonly used with young students learning to read in their native language. This presentation introduces Poodll ReadAloud, an application for the Moodle LMS that can be used to deliver oral reading practice. Poodll ReadAloud records the student's audio and evaluates how well the audio transcript matches the original reading passage. It produces a marked up passage showing the student "mistakes" , an accuracy score and a words-per-minute score. Using Poodll ReadAloud teachers can deliver regular, and formative, assessment of student reading without a negative impact on their own time. Students receive nearly instant visual feedback on their reading and can improve their score by re-attempting. Poodll ReadAloud is a commercial and open source product available as an annual subscription