Columbia LRC

Zoom Educators in the Summer Trading Ideas (ZESTI)
2020-08-21 09:30 - 10:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom Meeting 203 508 3989
A weekly working group for summer instructors, lead by Maria Luisa Gozzi.
Zoom Meeting: 203 508 3989

Zoom Drop-in Hours
2020-08-21 11:00 - 12:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Zoom Drop-in Hours with Simon – Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081

LRC Social Hour
2020-08-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Every Friday at 4pm (Zoom Meeting: 847 208 7081)

Language Teaching Colloquium with Silja Weber
2020-09-25 15:00 - 16:00 | Zoom Meeting 203 508 3989
This is the inaugural meeting of the Language Teaching Colloquium, a new event for the Columbia language community. Each week, the Colloquium will spotlight a Columbia language instructor, who will present on a topic relevant to our current teaching in the Zoom format. We will then transition to an open conversation about the challenges and successes of teaching in our current time.
This week, we are delighted to be joined by Silja Weber of the Department of Germanic Languages, who will speak about reflective assignments for building community and equity.
Here is the program for the event:

Simon and Chris introduce the idea of the Colloquium
Silja Weber (German) speaks about reflective assignments for building community and equity
Q&A for Silja’s presentation
Open conversation about the challenges and successes of the Fall 2020 Zoom semester so far

At 4pm the event will transition to the LRC Social Hour, for those who wish to stick around and chat.
The event will take place will take place on Friday, September 25 at 3pm at this Zoom ID: 203 508 3989.

Instructional Innovation Workshop
2020-09-30 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-10-21 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-10-28 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-11-11 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-11-18 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-12-09 15:00 - 16:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Our Instructional Innovation Workshops on pedagogy and technology in the virtual language classroom address the needs and interests of the language community. Some of the topics considered for this semester include: advanced Canvas functionality, working with non-Latin-based writing systems, and implementing project-based learning.
You are invited to join us in Zoom ID: 847 208 7081

Yale CLS Virtual Brown Bag Series
2020-10-01 08:45 - 09:45

Language Teaching Colloquium
2020-10-02 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-10-16 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-10-23 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-10-30 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-11-13 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-11-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Zoom Meeting 203 508 3989
Each week, a Columbia language instructor will present an idea, a tool, or a challenge related to teaching online, and the attendees will be able to give constructive feedback and share their own experiences. During the second, less formal, portion of the Colloquium the participants will share what they are encountering in their classrooms as we move through the semester.
The purpose of the Language Teaching Colloquium is to gain a clearer sense of our shared challenges, and to come up with effective solutions to them. In our current time of disconnect, we are atomized and siloed, and this weekly event will allow participants to gain a wide perspective on what is happening across languages and departments.

Reading Group
2020-10-07 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-11-04 15:00 - 16:00, 2020-12-02 15:00 - 16:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
The LRC Reading Group will be hosted on Wednesdays, once per month. The readings will be linked to articles suggested by our invited guests, and will help our community prepare to welcome and engage with our guest speakers.
You may join us in Zoom ID: 847 208 7081

LRC Invited Speaker: Dr. Sébastien Dubreil, Carnegie Mellon University
2020-10-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Zoom Meeting 203 508 3989
Using games to build a learning community in the L2 classroom
with Dr. Sébastien Dubreil
Carnegie Mellon Unviversity
Since the COVID‐19 pandemic has led to a radical transformation of the educational landscape, educators have had to manage the transition to a wide variety of models, including just about every variation between all online teaching and all face-to face classrooms, and every combination in-between, sometimes having to compose with both residential and remote learners. This situation has caused profound disruption to classroom instruction. In this presentation, I will try to envision how games, and game design can serve as avenues not only to structure the language classroom, but also to help in creating a community of learners and create and tighten the social bond between learners. Drawing from a course that was disrupted by the transition, we will examine how, by meshing a pedagogy of active learning with a pedagogy of care, we can meet the pedagogical challenge posed by current circumstances, retain the integrity of the course, and advance the teaching and learning enterprise. In particular, we will examine how the current situation is an opportunity to combine language and culture pedagogy with game design to enable students to think critically about the course content and contribute meaningful solutions to learning languages in the age of social distancing.
In preparation for the event we recommend reading the following:

Dubreil, Sébastien. “Using games for language learning in the age of social distancing.” Foreign Language Annals 53.2 (2020): 250-259.
Reinhardt, Jonathon, Kirby, Samantha. “8 things to know about teaching languages with videogames.” CALICO Infobytes. August (2020).

LRC Instructional Innovation Grant - Project Presentations
2020-10-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Presentations of the projects developed by Columbia language faculty with the assistance of the LRC Instructional Innovation Grants.
The presentations showcase the following projects completed in the Spring 2020 semester:

Elementary Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Digital Textbook: Stage 1 by Aleksandar Boskovic
Recording of Vietnamese Language Audio Material by Chung Nguyen
Project on Advanced Chinese Supplementary Teaching Materials by Lingjun Hu and Juan Zhong
Creating interactive web-based learning materials for learning Punjabi at Columbia University by Sandeep Chohan
A Class Website that Promotes Learning, Sharing, and Mentoring by Zhongqi Shi

Yale CLS Virtual Brown Bag Series: Dr. Florencia Henshaw
2020-10-15 08:45 - 09:45
Successful teaching strategies for online language courses
with Dr. Florencia Henshaw
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all educators have been faced with the challenge of determining how best to utilize available technologies to provide students with quality web-based instruction. Although literature on computer-assisted language learning abounds, teaching online courses that integrate meaningful synchronous and asynchronous communication still remains a daunting task for most language educators. Therefore, the overarching goal of this talk is to help instructors tackle the pedagogical and practical challenges of fostering language development remotely. The presenter will discuss best practices and strategies, particularly as they pertain to community building, interaction, and assessment. Examples and ideas of technology-enhanced activities and projects will be provided.
Florencia Henshaw has a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she is now the Director of Advanced Spanish. In her 14 years at UIUC, she has taught 19 different undergraduate and graduate courses, and she has designed seven online courses. Dr. Henshaw has published and presented on technology integration, heritage language instruction, and research-based pedagogical practices at national and international conferences

Yale Virtual Brown Bag Workshop Series
2020-10-22 08:45 - 09:45
Please join us for our weekly Brown Bag on Thursday, October 22, 2020 from 12:45 – 1:45. Chris Kaiser (Program Manager, Columbia University Language Resource Center), and Mary Jo Lubrano (Associate Director, Yale University Center for Language Study), will discuss results and reflections from the Shared Course Initiative. The discussion will center on the longer-term perspective of distance language teaching, and will share experiences from the SCI’s 9 years of remote collaboration, as the language community as a whole approaches its 9th month of teaching in the Zoom format.
Click here to join the Zoom meeting.

Yale CLS Virtual Brown Bag Series: Dr. Carl Blyth
2020-10-29 08:45 - 09:45
Open Foreign Language Education: The Rise of a New Knowledge Ecology
Compared with STEM fields, foreign language (FL) education and second language acquisition (SLA) have been slow to embrace Open Education (OE) and the new knowledge ecologies it produces. FL educators may have been hesitant to participate in the OE movement due to a lack of research which investigates the benefits and challenges of FL learning and teaching in open environments. This talk contextualizes the impact of OE on FL departments by focusing on how different kinds of disciplinary knowledge is created and disseminated within different academic contexts: instructional environments (the microsystem), teacher professional development (the mesosystem), and the profession at large (the exosystem). Finally, the talk will touch on the ideology of openness (the macrosystem) to discern how the democratic ethos of OE is disrupting the “closed system” of higher education.

Yale CLS Virtual Brown Bag Series: Dr. Erik Voss
2020-11-05 07:45 - 08:45
This week, the Center for Language Study is delighted to host Dr. Erik Voss of Columbia University Teachers College.
Technology for learning-oriented assessment in remote environments
Effective use of information technologies has become increasingly important as we shift to remote or hybrid language learning and assessment. Because of limited in-person interaction, selection and application of appropriate technologies for remote environments becomes critical. In a remote environment, language learning and language assessment tasks can share technologies for the purpose of assessing learning. For example, a learning-oriented language assessment approach can enable new forms of learning interaction and capturing new forms of evidence for learning (Saville, 2013). In addition, computers and mobile devices are capable of supporting collaborative or independent tasks, enhancing learner engagement, and providing appropriate, timely feedback.
This presentation will discuss ways in which technology can support basic principles of learning-oriented assessment such as developing assessment tasks as learning tasks, including student involvement in assessment processes, and producing forward-looking feedback (Keppell & Carless, 2006). Furthermore, the selection of appropriate tools and resources should take into consideration new language constructs and the impact of new assessment methods (Chapelle & Voss, 2016). The discussion will also highlight emerging information technologies that can be adapted for learning-oriented language assessment.
Presenter Bio
Erik Voss, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the Applied Linguistics and TESOL program at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. His teaching and research interests include applications of natural language processing in applied linguistics, language assessment and technology, and language assessment validation research. He has served as secretary of the Midwest Association of Language Testers (MwALT) and is an active member-at-large on the board of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA). He is currently coordinating social media for ILTA as part of the communications sub-committee and exploring options for hosting virtual language testing events.

LRC Invited Speaker: Dr. Marta González-Lloret
2020-11-06 15:00 - 17:00 | Zoom Meeting 203 508 3989
TBLT in the Distance Language Classroom
with Dr. Marta González-Lloret
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
As most teaching practitioners have had the chance to experience this year, technology can facilitate learning, including language learning. However, without a sound methodological base for the development of our curriculum and activities, technology is just a vehicle, and not the effective tool it can be. This talk advocates that a technology-mediated task-based curriculum is an effective organizing framework for online and hybrid language courses. I will first review key concepts such as task, technology-mediated tasks, and pedagogic tasks. Participants will then learn how to select tasks for an online curriculum and how to sequence them based on previous existing SLA research. Several technologies and activities will then be proposed as tasks that can be adopted and adapted for different languages and at different levels. Finally, the presentation will address some of the challenges of implementing TBLT in online environments and will suggest ways to overcome them.
Recommended reading:
González-Lloret, Marta. “Technology for task‐based language teaching.” The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning (2017): 234-247.

LRC Invited Speaker: Dr. Regine Hampel
2020-12-04 10:00 - 12:00
Please join us for a lecture and discussion by Professor Regine Hampel of the Open University UK titled, “Disruptive Technologies and the Language Classroom.”
The event will take place on December 4, 2020 in Zoom meeting 203 508 3989.
Abstract
New technologies have the potential to open up the classroom and to radically transform how we learn (Säljö 1999; Wertsch 2002). However, there is still a widespread assumption that their use is inconsequential, with many teachers and researchers treating them ‘as a digital simulacrum of earlier analog practices’ (Thorne 2003).
This talk brings together complex systems theory with sociocultural understandings of learning and a multimodal perspective on communication to explore the disruptive potential of the new media. Conceptualizing the language classroom (understood in the widest sense) as an ecosystem consisting of different interacting parts will allow us to focus on the changes that language education has undergone over the past decades as a result of the introduction of new technologies and of how learners shape the tools they use, thus effecting transformative change on individual and collective practices.
I will use the notion of ‘attractors’ to describe face-to-face communication as the original discourse in the language classroom (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008), and then explore how computer mediation has impacted on these attractors. I will show how the new technologies support new interaction patterns and multimodal communication and position language learners differently in relation to the world where language is not just a set of rules but where it is used to make meaning.
To finish, we will discuss the implications of what has been called a ‘phase shift’ for language teachers, researchers and institutions, and how we can realize the potential that the online media offer, thus encouraging a new learning ecology – which has become even more pressing in the context of the current pandemic.

LRC Instructional Innovation Grant - Project Presentations
2020-12-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Presentations of the projects developed by Columbia language faculty with the assistance of the LRC Instructional Innovation Grants.
The presentations showcase the following projects completed in the Fall 2020 semester:

Interactive Digital Resources for Learning and Teaching Grammar in a Medical Spanish Class (Part II) by Juan Pablo Cominguez
Integrating Heritage Language and Heritage Culture in the Teaching of Romanian – Continuation/Implementation by Mona Momescu

Instructional Innovation Workshop
2021-01-27 10:00 - 11:00 | Zoom Meeting 847 208 7081
Our Instructional Innovation Workshops on pedagogy and technology in the language classroom address the needs and interests of Columbia’s language community. This semester’s theme is “Visualizing the Distance Classroom” and it covers topics ranging from hosting virtual conversation hours via proximity chat platforms, through creating class projects by leveraging various video tools.
