If web-based technology is increasingly becoming the central plank of contemporary teaching and learning processes, there is still too little evidence to suggest that it is delivering purposeful learning activities beyond its widely perceived potential as a learning resource providing content and learning objects. This is due in part to the…

The term "design" is being understood more and more as a methodological process, together with its acceptance as the result of such a process. As a process, it is a stage in the courseware engineering life cycle which primarily focuses on rendering the development process more effective and on enhancing the qualities of the finished system,…

The purpose of this article is to introduce end-user development (EUD) processes to the CALL software development community. EUD refers to the active participation of end-users, as non-professional developers, in the software development life cycle. Unlike formal software engineering approaches, the focus in EUD on means/ends development is…

The phrase "software design" is not one that arouses the interest of many CALL practitioners, particularly those from a humanities background. However, software design essentials are simply logical ways of going about designing a system. The fundamentals include modularity, anticipation of change, generality and an incremental approach. While CALL…

We will argue that CALL can usefully be viewed as a subset of computer software engineering and can profit from adopting some of the recent progress in software development theory. The unified modelling language has become the industry standard modelling technique and the accompanying unified process is rapidly gaining acceptance. The manner in…

In this article, the authors introduce Digital Dante, an online, multimedia Dante-related academic resource that presents traditional elements of scholarly research through new technological means, specifically digital technology. The project seeks to provide multimedia supplementary materials to those studying the original text, enabling readers…

Practically since their availability, a succession of audiovisual recording devices (e.g., reel-to-reel, VCRs, PCs) has been used to capture language samples, and myriad playback and broadcast devices (e.g., phonographs, radios, televisions) have provided access to authentic speech samples. The espousal of audiolingual theory in the 1950s brought…

Discussion boards provide an interactive venue where new and future language teachers can reflect, evaluate, solve problems or simply exchange ideas (e.g., Bonk, Hansen, Grabner-Hagen, Lazar, & Mirabelli, 1996; DeWert, Babinski, & Jones, 2003; Kumari, 2001; Pawan, Paulus, Yalcin, & Chang, 2003). In addition, encouraging future teachers to learn…

This study was a comparative investigation of face-to-face and written electronic conferences. The participants were advanced English as a second language (hereafter: ESL) students. The two types of conferences were compared in terms of textual features and participation. There was no statistically significant difference in the total number of…

The Internet has become an important communication medium and it is having a significant impact on language use. The present study takes a "snapshot" of how the Polish language is currently used with modern communications technologies by Polish-Australians living in Melbourne. Through a questionnaire, it surveys which communications technologies…

To explore the impact of the communication medium on building common ground, this article presents research comparing learner use of reception strategies in traditional face-to-face (FTF) and in synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). Reception strategies, such as reprises, hypothesis testing and forward inferencing provide evidence of…

Electronic literacy today is a moving target. How and why people read and write online are evolving at the fast pace of Internet time. One of the most striking developments in the past few years has been how new social networking phenomena on the Web like community tagging, shared bookmarking, and blogs have created convergences between consumers…

This study of digital storytelling attempts to apply Kress's (2003) notions of synaesthesia, transformation, and transduction to the analysis of four undergraduate L2 writers' multimedia text creation processes. The students, entering freshmen, participated in an experimental course entitled "Multimedia Writing," whose purpose was to experience…

Adopting a literacy perspective towards student interactions with digital media can extend and develop views of second language (L2) listening comprehension. In this case study, variations in "play" are grounded in a media literacy perspective as a way to frame student work with authentic videotext. Twenty-two Australian students of Japanese…

This paper focuses on the electronic literacy practices of two Korean-American heritage language learners who manage Korean weblogs. Online users deliberately alter standard forms of written language and play with symbols, characters, and words to economize typing effort, mimic oral language, or convey qualities of their linguistic identity such…