Over the past two years, doctoral student, Per Urlaub, has used CourseWork, Stanford's course management system, extensively in teaching German language. Now, Urlaub is extending CourseWork's versatility and reliability beyond the classroom and bringing it into his dissertation research about reading comprehension strategies and hermeneutics in the German language and literature classroom. Urlaub, a Ph.D. candidate in German Studies, will use CourseWork to stage a five-part experiment consisting of a pre-questionnaire, pre-test, treatment, post-test, and post-questionnaire.
Research Questions: Theoretical and Practical
Urlaub's research addresses both theoretical and practical issues. Applying competing theories of second language acquisition, Urlaub will be exploring the relationship between reading comprehension and interpretation in the second language reading process . His research also relates to curricular policy around reading instruction. In particular, Urlaub will be exploring the practical question of to what extent explicit training in reading comprehension strategies helps American college students to become more "sophisticated" readers of German literature.
Why CourseWork?
When asked why he chose CourseWork to stage his experiment, Urlaub responded:
"CourseWork helps me to stage the experiment online without requiring knowledge of advanced Internet skills. Parts (1), (2), (4), and (5) of the experiment are administered in CourseWork using the Assignment Tool. My questionnaires use multiple choice and short response formats. My Tests display media (in my case, a text) and an entry field for a short response. In addition, I use the Course Homepage tool for instructions and the Course Materials tool for a printer-friendly version of the instructions. The training part of the experiment is on an external web site, but I provide the link to the training site also via CourseWork."
What CourseWork Can Do
ATS for the Language Center, Joseph Kautz, worked with Academic Technology Consultant, Jacqueline Mai, in setting up the CourseWork site for Urlaub's experiment.
Kautz comments enthusiastically on CourseWork's power and flexibility:
"In the past supporting an experiment like Per's would have required a custom-made solution, hosted on a departmental server. It would have been expensive and time consuming to create and support. A lot of resources would be required to support just ONE experiment! CourseWork can accommodate Per's work and simultaneously give tests to two hundred first-year Spanish students."
"Resources to support technology with the functional depth of CourseWork are almost non-existent in the humanities. CourseWork has leveled the playing field and language instructors and graduate students are responding with substantive and innovative applications of the software."
Urlaub adds: "CourseWork's ability to record verbal and written answers would be very complex to program for many people, including me. There are also the issues of reliability and security of the data."
An Intuitive Means of Managing Data and Users
CourseWork provides a highly intuitive means of managing data and users, and this positively influences the quantity and quality of the data Urlaub can collect in his experiment. Urlaub explains:
"A common problem in language acquisition research is using a too small subject group in otherwise perfectly designed projects. This is even more true for the research for less-commonly taught languages or research that focuses on advanced learners. This problem can be avoided through CourseWork, because subjects and researcher are flexible in a temporal and geographical sense."
"In a traditional format, it takes a lot of effort to put a bunch of students for a study into one room (all at the same time, or in multiple installments, possibly at different locations). Via CourseWork, people can work whenever they like, and I expect to collect more data over a period of time than I would be able to, if I offered several 'stagings' of the experiment."
"I do not even have to be in California to collect data. For example, I will be on the East Coast over the winter and in Germany next year, but students can still participate in the study. This flexibility is not merely a convenience, but it will finally result in a larger subject group, which makes the study's results eventually more solid."
For More Information
For more information about CourseWork, see CourseWork Highlights for Winter 2005 in this issue or visit the web at:
