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2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
Recommendations and Conclusion
To answer our inquiry question, “
What is the role of short-term technology tests in
developing long-
term sustainable CALL instructional designs?” we offer the following
recommendations, based on our conceptual framework, our understanding of the
academic CALL literature, and our own experiences:
1.
We believe that short-term experimentation, trying something different each
semester or academic year, is not a strategic answer to meeting the CALL needs of
students. On the other hand, it is a necessary evil, because it is only through such
experimentation that we can learn the affordances and pitfalls of various applications
and categories of CALL implementation.
2.
Short-term experimentation should be seen as a means to an end, and not an end
in itself. It is how we must gather information that can lead to best practices in the
design of instructional technology, and in strategically meeting the outcome needs of
students.
3.
All CALL applications, long-term or short-term, should use a Task-Based approach
to give students positive experiences with meaningful language use, because
confidence,
motivation, and ability are linked (Wu, Yen & Marek, 2011). Positive
experiences increase confidence, which results in higher motivation, and therefore
eventually leads to higher ability.
4.
The CALL field must come to accept that the reporting of incomplete success is as
valuable as the reporting of triumph in the academic literature. We design based on
the best available theory and our knowledge of past practice, so the reporting of past
practice must be complete and candid.
5.
We believe that it is appropriate for the research timeline
of a given scholar to
begin with short-term experimentation with available populations, such as students,
but as an academic career progresses, the scholar needs
to evolve to a focus on
conceptual understanding and systemic design for complete academic programs.
In the final analysis, the best interest of our students must come first. That means
determining what their outcomes need to be and selecting instructional designs, including
technology designs, which are most likely to achieve those outcomes, given the diverse
and sometimes confounding variables working on teaching and learning.
A reasonable
balance between literature about experimentation and literature about sustainable
design, mediated by strong meta-analysis, will best help us achieve those beneficial
outcomes.
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