Courseware is a term
that combines the words “course” with “software.” It is software containing
educational content, instruction, and instructional strategies. Its meaning
originally was used to describe additional educational material intended as
kits for teachers or trainers or as tutorials for students, usually packaged
for use with a computer.
Courseware can include:
·
Material for instructor-led classes
·
Material for self-directed
computer-based training (CBT)
·
Web sites that offer interactive
tutorials
·
Material that is coordinated with
distance learning, such as live classes conducted over the Internet
·
Videos for use individually or as part
of classes
The
CD-ROM is the most common means of delivering courseware that is not offered
online. For teachers and trainers, courseware content may include set-up
information, a course plan, teaching notes, and exercises.
A.
Self‐Developed Courseware
Self‐developed
courseware is usually designed by collaborative teams to create language
learning tools to suit a specific group of learners. Different modes of
vocabulary annotation and multimedia glosses are often built‐in to help
learners increase vocabulary size and improve comprehension of text. A growing
incorporation of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) into self‐developed
courseware has been due to technological breakthroughs from the fields of
computational linguistics, information retrieval, cognitive science, artificial
intelligence, and discourse processing. ITSs are designed to simulate a human
tutor’s behavior and guidance.
B. Commercial
Courseware
Commercial
courseware is ready‐made, licensed, and sold by companies. It usually consists
of a combination of lessons, activities, tests, and other relevant materials. One
popular commercial courseware that was studied for its effectiveness for L2
learning of listening and reading is Longman English Online. Jamieson,
Chapelle, and Preiss (2004) evaluated its design and showed that it met most of
their criteria. A newer version, Longman
English Interactive (LEI), was
again examined and compared to another commercially available online
courseware, Quartet Online (Quartet Scholar) by Dincer and Parmaksız (2013).
While
some educators are able to develop their own courseware to meet the specific
needs their students, most of them have neither the time nor the technical
support. The market
for commercial language learning
courseware is vast and expanding. More studies on evaluating commercial
courseware would help teachers to choose those most appropriate so
institutional investment is not wasted.
Reference :
A Chapelle, Carol and Sauro, Shannon. (2017). The Handbook
of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning: Technologies for Teaching and
Learning L2 Reading. India: Willey backwell
No comments:
Post a Comment