2004-05 Mini-Grant Recipient Junko Ito, Linguistics

Project title:  Developing a Web-CT Course Master for Introduction to Linguistics

Project description:
A graduate student assistant was hired to create a Web-CT Course Master for Linguistics 20 (Introduction to Linguistics). Ling 20 is a required course for both Linguistics and Language Studies majors and minors. As a GE course (IH), it is also aimed at students broadly interested in language in a variety of fields. Since it is a prerequisite to many of the upper-division linguistics courses, Ling 20 needs to be taught every quarter with consistency and high quality, and a recent dramatic increase in enrollment has necessitated a change in the style of teaching, in particular, in the use of web-based materials. 

Past instructors of the course had already made headway in creating various web-based teaching materials, which first needed to be integrated and made consistent.  Websites that enrich course topics (for example, interactive consonant and vowel charts) were also researched and catalogued. Most importantly, a database of problem sets and on-line quizzes for the different units of the course were created. The work included updating and reformatting existing problem sets and quizzes. This Course Master project was presented at the Teaching and Learning Symposium on February 16th, 2006, and received favorable feedback from the audience.

Impact on teaching and learning:
The main benefit of creating a Web-CT Course Master is that all the course material is immediately available to the instructors that are assigned to Ling 20. It is also accessible to future instructors of the course (who may wish to prepare their course already for the subsequent quarters) as well as to instructors teaching other related courses. The Web-CT Ling 20 Course Master developed through this grant has been used by two instructors so far (Winter 2006 and Spring 2006). The student evaluations of these courses note that the Web-CT material was useful, and that the practice problems and quizzes helped their mastery of the concepts. The instructors and teaching assistants were also positive about the Course Master. They noted that the unified material ensured consistency in the teaching of this course, and commented favorably on the fact that it was easy to individually tailor the course to suit their teaching styles and pedagogical needs. Minor updating, revisions, and additions of individual problems and quizzes were also made by the subsequent instructors of the course.

Future Plans:
We plan to continue monitoring the use and effectiveness of the Ling 20 Course Master. Next year, it will be used in two summer sessions as well as in all three quarters. If this Course Master project turns out to be successful in the long run, it will have been worth the initial investment in time and effort, we hope to develop WEB-CT Course Masters for other linguistics courses, in particular, for those with large enrollments.