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.

H5P: Tasks for communicative language practice using a Moodle plugin

H5P is a content collaboration framework (a plugin for Moodle) that enables teachers to create interactive content including slideshows, interactive videos, games, branching scenarios, quizzes, and much more. In this workshop, attendees will first be introduced to a range of H5P content which were designed to facilitate a first-year university-level English course rooted in the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. Applications and limitations of H5P to enhance existing classroom activities such as information-gaps and dictations will be demonstrated using PC and mobile versions, as will a handful of entirely new language learning tasks made possible through H5P. Following a demonstration of the end user experience, attendees will have the chance to build their own content in a dedicated Moodle course, as workshop leaders demonstrate how anyone, regardless of tech proficiency, can develop and share content that is engaging, eye-catching, and grounded in research. It is recommended that attendees bring their favorite device on which to create H5P content, and though most content is compatible on all browsers, please note that content involving automated speech recognition (ASR) is currently usable only on Google Chrome.