UCLA Center for Digital Humanities Practical Use of Digital Media: Heritage Language Learners and GE Courses at UCLA Presenters from CDH:  Dr. Zoe Borovsky (Academic Services Manager),  Dr. Annelie Chapman (Instructional Technology Coordinator), and  Brian Lin (Media Assistant)

CDH Heritage Language Reading Project Hypermedia Berlin

background  Academic Services  Labs  Course Websites  Projects  User Services  Network Services

CDH Projects  Applications once a year Project Team:  Eugene Hamai Project Technical Coordinator  Shawn Higgins Media Specialist  Brian Lin Media Assistant

Heritage Language Reading Project  Heritage Language Students – a definition  A student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language  Limited ability to read and write the heritage language

Heritage Language Reading Project  Goals Provide on-line multi-media materials to teach reading to students with oral proficiency in Thai and Korean Self-paced, self- correcting exercises

HLRP: Challenges  Thai and Korean are Less Commonly Taught Languages  Instructors had different pedagogical approaches  Thai has fives tones, only four of which are marked-- how important to heritage learners?  Technical staff did not read the languages  Instructors were not used to working with technology  Grant proposal (funded by Dept of Ed.) was written with minimal input from technologists

HLRP: technology  Why Flash? Hidden “requirements”:  Desire for more complicated and interactive exercises Heritage learners ARE tech-savvy audience  Cross-platform and cross-browser Font representation Exercise layout and functionality  No keyboard input – heritage students do not type in target language

Heritage Language Reading Project  the heritage site the heritage site  Teach, Practice, Test  Beginning – Intermediate levels Vowels & Consonants Words, Sentences Short Stories

HLRP: What we learned  Get involved early: preferably when proposal is written  Be realistic: One language would have been better  Establish roles (e.g. who finds images) at the beginning  Technical staff cannot proofread a language they do not understand  PIs should sign off on grad student work before implementing  Test new material on paper—content proofing takes time

Heritage Language Reading Project  What worked well Interactive exercises: Flash & action scripting Student programmer who knew the language and learned the technology Authentic content: stories about other Heritage students Common spelling mistakes

Hypermedia Berlin Asst. Prof. Todd Presner (Germanic)

Hypermedia Berlin  Revamp a GE course using digital technology  Interdisciplinary: incorporate art history, history, literature, architecture, film  Focus on context as well as text: teach the city in both time and place  Use the site in the classroom, i.e., lecture from it  Integrate student projects

Berlin: the technologies  Need to navigate in both space and time Flash Zoomify  Hypermedia Berlin Hypermedia Berlin Username: berlin61 Password: spring2004

Berlin: The Challenges  GSRs with little technical expertise Create content templates in Dreamweaver Enlist the help of tech savvy itcs during lab sessions  Undergraduates asked: does this class have a text? Is this a lit class? Mixture of traditional and new media assignments

Hypermedia Berlin  Why did it work? Faculty buy-in; Presner had tried before and was less successful We used technology that GSR could learn to add content: opened our lab as a project workspace, spent our time teaching We used technology that students could learn to add content

Summary  Humanities scholarship has fundamentally changed: instruction needs to keep pace  Students taking humanities courses have changed (many more come from Heritage backgrounds)  Interdisciplinary courses require multi-media on demand—not just in the lab  Initially students will ask: where’s the text? but eventually: why should we write papers when we can contribute our own digital projects?  Sometimes, we can make it work!