Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
The Libra Multimedia Authoring
Environment and CALL
Multimedia Courseware
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
Southwest Texas State University
ABSTRACT
This article describes the genesis of the Libra authoring system and provides a detailed view of the design of a courseware program created by
means of it. Funds from multiyear grants supported the development and
subsequent dissemination of the authoring system. Lessons learned during the dissemination of the authoring system underscore the need for
more in-depth understanding of instructional design and the implementation of pedagogical principles by faculty authors in multimedia materials.
Development of the courseware program described here reveals the substantial benefits to be gained by collection and analysis of various forms of
student use data.
KEYWORDS
Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Libra Authoring System,
Courseware, French, Beginning Learners
INTRODUCTION: DESIGN PHILOSOPHY AND BACKGROUND OF
LIBRA
The Libra authoring environment was designed to enable faculty to create multimedia materials that focus on facilitating students’ acquisition of
listening comprehension proficiency in foreign languages. As such, the
authoring system contains tools that allow faculty authors to present information to students (text, audio, graphics, and analog/digital video), to
create learner assistance components (e.g., help screens, scripts, and dictionaries), and to make use of several kinds of question formats to verify
students’ comprehension. When the project team conceptualized Libra’s
design at the beginning of the project in 1990, we of course realized that
© 1999 CALICO Journal
Volume 17 Number 1
59
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
the authoring system had to be easy to use, but we also wished to make it
sufficiently flexible to support the development of creative lessons that
apply directly to students enrolled in classes at specific levels of instruction in individual educational contexts. The interplay between ease of use
and flexibility has been a constant consideration throughout the development process.
The underlying research basis for the development of the authoring system included information processing theory and foreign language schema
theory.1 Following from work by theorists in these two fields and suggestions by practitioners in foreign language teaching, we built provisions
into the authoring system for explicating the logical structure of oral texts,
providing advance organizers (e.g., generating hypotheses about the meaning of the text, describing characters and settings, and preteaching pertinent lexical and grammatical structures), and asking different kinds of
comprehension questions supported by multimedia student feedback. The
inclusion of authoring tools that reflected the central tenets of the underlying theories and teaching techniques was intended to permit faculty authors to develop lessons that modeled appropriate listening comprehension strategies and guided students in their effective use. Finally, we added
procedures to make different kinds of learner assistance components such
as help screens, written scripts of dialogues, and dictionaries (see Fischer
& Farris, 1995). All of the design elements were included in the authoring
system as preconstructed objects and templates that faculty authors could
select and modify as needed when they created their student lessons.
CONTEXT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AUTHORING SYSTEM
Libra was developed by a project team based at Southwest Texas State
University with the assistance of an initial three-year grant from the Fund
for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The team consisted of a Macintosh group with Robert Fischer, Michael Farris, and James
Champion, and a PC group headed by Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, at that
time, of The Pennsylvania State University. The project also benefited from
the services of two consultants, Janet Swaffar of the University of Texas at
Austin and John Underwood of Western Washington University. The project
included the development of the authoring system and its use to create
prototypical multimedia courseware in French, German, and Spanish. Both
the authoring system and the resulting courseware programs were submitted to extensive evaluation.
The development grant was followed by a second three-year grant from
FIPSE to disseminate the authoring system. This second grant supported
a series of faculty training workshops at several institutions and collaborative projects with faculty at nine institutions: Carnegie Mellon Univer60
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
sity, the Catholic University of America, Northwestern University, the Pennsylvania State University, San Francisco State University, the University of
Arkansas, the University of California at San Diego, the University of
Colorado, and the University of Houston. Faculty at these institutions used
the authoring system to create materials in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The dissemination project culminated
in the publication of a volume of articles and reports on selected projects
(see Fischer, 1997).
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION OF THE AUTHORING SYSTEM
Preliminary discussions among the members of the project team and the
consultants revealed that some lesson components were of fundamental
importance in all CALL applications. Faculty authors needed to be able to
present information to students, play videoclips, create hyperactive text,
make icon-buttons, display learner assistance features, ask comprehension questions, and provide student feedback. The project team devoted
several months to discussing these objects and experimented with a variety of design schemes. These efforts resulted in the creation of a basic
display in the authoring system that contains the objects essential for lesson development (see Figure 1).2
Figure 1
Basic Objects in the Libra Authoring System
Volume 17 Number 1
61
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
It should first be noted that lesson development takes place in a whatauthors-see-is-what-students-get environment. Thus, the objects in Figure
1 that authors use and modify as they develop their materials are the same
ones students use in the finished lesson.
At the upper right corner are preprogrammed navigation buttons that
permit students to navigate through the lesson. Authors can modify the
appearance and function of these buttons and delete some or all of them.
At the lower right corner are a total of nine blank buttons that authors can
use to call up help screens and to link to other objects and events. These
buttons, called option buttons, are designed to be usable by students in
every display in a given section of the lesson. Again, authors can modify
the appearance and function of these buttons and delete unused buttons.
At the lower left are videodisc player controls that can be defined to play
specific segments from a videodisc. At the time of initial development of
the authoring system, videodiscs were the primary source for video material. Digital video has now assumed that role and is included in the
Macintosh version of Libra as customary QuickTime movies.
Authors can quickly make additional icon-buttons for individual displays in the lesson by using the tools in a tool bar provided in the authoring
system. After making the buttons, authors choose icons for them and can
then link them to events and objects listed in a pop-up menu in the link
dialogue box (see Figure 2).
Figure 2
Linking Possibilities in Libra
62
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
Learner assistance features include a generic help screen component,
reading displays (which can be used to display written versions of spoken
dialogues in listening comprehension lessons or to show texts in reading
comprehension lessons), and dictionaries. The generic help screen is shown
in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Libra Generic Help Screen
Authors can use the generic help screen component to create a virtually
unlimited number of help screens which they can make accessible to students at any point in the lesson. To enter text in the fields of the help
screen (or, for that matter, in any field in the authoring system), authors
unlock the fields and type as they would in any Macintosh application.
Figure 4 shows the reading display.
Volume 17 Number 1
63
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
Figure 4
Libra Reading Display
The reading display contains a large text field to the left and three smaller
annotation fields to the right, all of which can be moved and reshaped to
meet the requirements of specific lesson designs. (See, for example, the
video script in Figure 11 below.) Again, to enter text in the large field to
the left, authors unlock the field and type or paste passages of text from a
word processing application. Authors make hyperactive text by selecting
the relevant portions of text in the left field and entering textual annotations in a dialogue box that appears and/or choosing an object or event to
link to in a pop-up menu. (See the list of objects and events in Figure 2
above.) This same procedure is used to make hyperactive text in any field
in the authoring system.
Libra originally contained four different kinds of question formats:
multiple choice, checklist, binary checklist, and icon-sorting (see Figures
5 to 8).3
64
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
Figure 5
Multiple Choice Question
Figure 6
Checklist Question
Volume 17 Number 1
65
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
Figure 7
Binary Checklist Question
Figure 8
Icon-Sorting Question
66
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
The authoring system generates the structure and answer-processing logic
appropriate to each question type. Authors insert the content of questions
by unlocking the text fields and typing the question and its options. The
feedback button at the lower left in all the question formats is
preprogrammed to process students’ answers and to display student feedback (text and multimedia). The only additional objects that have to be
made to complete questions for the icon-sorting question in Figure 8 are
moveable buttons. Authors make moveable buttons in the same way as
other icon-buttons that students then click and drag into the relevant iconsorting fields to answer questions.
Each question type is designed to serve a specific instructional purpose.
Multiple choice questions are used to verify that students have understood a single (albeit perhaps abstract) point of information. Checklist
questions confirm students’ understanding of more complex sets of information by having them select more than one option to answer questions.
Binary checklist questions, which have mutually exclusive horizontal pairs
of checklist boxes, guide students to characterize people or events in binary terms (e.g., tall vs. short, hostile vs. friendly, rich vs. poor). Iconsorting questions direct students to demonstrate their understanding of
physical locations and relationships among characters. It is noteworthy
that since the icon-sorting question format can generate up to 25 sorting
fields and since buttons can display either icons or text, this question format has proven to support the greatest amount of instructional creativity
among faculty authors.
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION OF LIBRA COURSEWARE
As mentioned earlier, faculty authors have used Libra to create multimedia lessons in a variety of foreign languages. Some of these faculty authors received support from the FIPSE dissemination project, while others learned how to use Libra on their own.4 In particular, Franziska Lys
has developed and distributed Drehort Neubrandenburg Interaktiv, a
multimedia program for second-year German students based on Libra and
additional software (see review of Drehort Neubrandenburg Interaktiv
by Wittig Davis, 1999).
We describe here in some detail the design and production of a series of
lessons in French that have been used as part of a first-semester course at
Southwest Texas State University. Robert Fischer used Libra to create this
series of lessons during the initial Libra development project and submitted them to rigorous evaluation. He then refined these lessons based on
the results of that evaluation and subsequent analysis of student usage
data collected by means of a tracking system built into a later version of
the authoring system.5
Volume 17 Number 1
67
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
The lessons were developed for the video program La Marée et ses secrets ‘The Tide and Its Secrets,’ a series of five 15 minute episodes which
portray the adventures of two young people vacationing in the town of
Cancale on the seashore in western France. The story is a relatively simply
mystery in which a rich store owner attempts to blackmail an oyster farmer
into hiding stolen diamonds for him. The language of the video cannot be
characterized as authentic because the dialogue is scripted and prepared
for language learners. However, the level of language used in the dialogue
and the virtually native speed at which the dialogue lines are delivered
present substantial challenges to first-semester students.
The design of the lessons reflects the underlying principles of discourse
processing theory and schema theory alluded to earlier. In addition, because the lessons were designed for first-semester students after only two
weeks of instruction and focused on verifying their comprehension of the
video material, much of the lesson content was written in English. The
overall structure of the lessons includes an introduction, a series of advance organizers, presentation of the video material, several sets of comprehension questions supported by student feedback and help displays,
and a final free recall protocol. Sample lesson content from the first lesson is discussed below.
After an initial splash screen, students view a display that explains the
purpose of the lesson (see Figure 9).
Figure 9
Statement of the Purpose of the Lesson
68
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
The display provides a very brief explanation of the instructional purpose
of the lesson and contains a single button that takes students directly to a
procedural directions display that informs them how to use the lesson
(see Figure 10).
Figure 10
Procedural Directions Display
The reason for this lock-step approach is that analysis of student data
from the first version of the lesson revealed that some students apparently
skimmed over the procedural directions and were not aware of the availability of some of the lesson’s learner assistance components. Consequently,
since it is important to ensure that students read the directions of the
lesson, the program presents the lesson instructions in fixed order. Students cannot advance in the lesson until they have read all the instructions
and seen all the lesson components. The first lesson instruction points out
hyperactive phrases (the heavy gray underlining). When students click on
the word “hyperactive,” the program displays a message about hyperactive phrases and then directs them to click on the option buttons at the
lower right. These buttons are available in almost every display in the
lesson and are the primary mechanism by which students access learner
assistance features.
Volume 17 Number 1
69
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
The leftmost option button calls up a script of the video (see Figure 11).
Figure 11
Script of the Video
The video script, modified from the reading display shown in figure 4
above, contains partial dialogue material, only the phrases that students
must know in order to understand the story. The phrases are hyperactive
and are linked to glosses that appear in the small annotation field beneath
the script. The script display also contains buttons that provide students
access to the full script of the video and a complete French-English dictionary of the words used in the video.
The second option button from the left calls up help screens that support the comprehension questions to follow later in the lesson. Each question has a separate help screen that provides hints to answer the question
and focuses students’ attention on relevant parts of the video. The help
displays will be discussed more fully below.
The third option button calls up a “text map” of the story.6 The text map
organizes students’ viewing of the video and is the most prominent of the
advance organizers in the lesson. The text map will be described in more
detail below.
70
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
The rightmost option button calls up a display of the characters of the
story. The character display provides information about the characters
and is the first advance organizer students see after they leave the procedural directions display. As students read the final piece of information in
the procedural directions display, a Continue button appears at the lower
right and leads them to the character display shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12
Character Display
The icon-buttons in the character display represent the characters in the
story, and the connecting lines suggest the relationships among them. For
example, Yves Keravec (the far left icon-button) is the nephew of Lucien
Keravec, who is accompanied to Cancale by Marie-Pierre Renaud, a classmate from Paris not related to the Keravec family. Clicking on the iconbutton in the nodes calls up a brief description of the character and displays a still frame of the character from the video.
The character display is followed by the second advance organizer which
describes the setting of the story in a series of three displays. These displays locate the region of France in which the action occurs and progressively focus on salient features in the town of Cancale.
Volume 17 Number 1
71
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
After the introduction of the characters and the description of the setting of the story, the third advance organizer shows the text map of the
episode of the story (see Figure 13).
Figure 13
Text Map of Episode One
Here, the buttons represent the various scenes of the episode, and the
connecting lines the essential plot line of the story. The first button represents the arrival of the two young people in Saint Malo. In the second
scene, two suspicious people exchange a mysterious package (the stolen
diamonds). Afterwards, the two young people travel to Cancale by bus
and arrive at the Keravec’s house. While having lunch, the primary conspirator, Robert Lecoz, is described in a brief aside. After the meal, the
two young characters take a walk in town and encounter the same suspicious characters from scene two.
The text map is the organizational center of the entire lesson. Its purpose is to break down the 15 minute video into more manageable chunks
and, at the same time, to encourage students to comprehend the meaning
of the story in terms of its internal structure. This kind of higher level
processing is important to help students to develop a complete understanding of the meaning of the text. Students need to understand the text
not only at the level of words and phrases but also at the level of larger
units of discourse (e.g., scenes). The text map plays a key role in guiding
72
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
students to process information from the story in terms of these larger
units and how these units fit together.
The program directs students to click on the buttons in the text map to
see the final advance organizer and to view the individual scenes of the
video. After viewing each scene and answering questions over it, the program returns students to the text map as a point of reference and to view
the following scene. This consistent recycling of the text map serves to
keep students constantly aware of the overall structure of the text.
In subsequent lessons, the text maps continue to identify scenes and to
suggest the overall structure of the video episode, but they do not specify
the content of the individual scenes. This gradual reduction of pedagogical scaffolding is intended to guide students to develop the information
processing skills they need to extract information from other texts.
The final advance organizer is scene-specific and preteaches phrases
that students must know in order to understand the primary message of
the scene (see Figure 14).
Figure 14
Preteaching Phrases for Video Scenes
The sentence in Figure 14 is a key phrase in scene one. The phrase is
hyperactive and is linked to the video such that when students click on it,
they hear it pronounced by the character in the scene. The phrase Pardon,
Monsieur. L’arrêt de car pour Cancale, s’il vous plaît. ‘Excuse me. The bus
stop for Cancale, please.’ in the figure above was included as an advance
Volume 17 Number 1
73
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
organizer for scene one because it lays the ground work for an eventful
bus trip in a later scene.
In addition to highlighting important scene-specific information, the
hyperactive phrases in the lesson serve a general instructional purpose. It
should be recalled that the Libra lessons were designed to be used by firstsemester students after only two weeks of instruction. At this early point
in the instruction, it is helpful for students to be able to see written phrases
of French dialogue material because many students have difficulty identifying words in spoken utterances. The absence of word level stress in
French obscures word boundaries, making it difficult for beginning learners whose native language is English to apprehend individual words. The
availability of written versions of spoken phrases helps these students identify words and syntactic markers and thereby more easily parse sentences.
After students have completed the vocabulary advance organizer for a
given scene, they proceed to view the video segment of this scene and
answer comprehension questions over it. For example, after students view
scene one, the first question confirms that they know the identity of the
two young people (see Figure 15).
Figure 15
First Question on Scene One
This checklist question tells students to click on the names of the two
characters. When students make errors, the program provides minimal
74
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
written diagnostic feedback and displays a help field at the upper right
corner. The minimal diagnostic feedback is designed to maximize students’
interaction with the video material. Instead of providing information to
guide students to the correct answer, the feedback directs their attention
to the help field. The message in the help field identifies one of the characters and tells students to click on the video button to play the segment of
the scene in which the character identifies his traveling companion. If
students need additional help, they may also consult the video script and
eventually the dictionary.
It should be mentioned here that the design of the lesson prevents students from simply guessing the correct answer to questions on repeated
trials. Feedback to incorrect answers not only displays written feedback
and the help screen but also covers the question options with a transparent field which blocks students from immediately clicking on the question
options again. It is only after students have clicked on the video button in
the help screen to replay the video that the program removes the transparent field and allows students to answer the question again.
In addition, students cannot pass over the question and go on to the
next without getting the correct answer because the question display does
not contain any default navigation buttons. When students select the correct answer, the program shows a congratulatory feedback message and
displays a button permitting students to continue (see Figure 16).
Figure 16
Correct Answer to Question One
Volume 17 Number 1
75
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
Hiding and showing fields and buttons in this manner provides effective
control over progression through the lesson.
Students continue the process of viewing scenes and answering questions on the scenes as they proceed through the lesson. The lesson makes
use of all the question formats available in the authoring system listed in
Figures 5 through 8 above to verify students’ comprehension of the entire
episode. Some questions focus on specific information communicated by
the characters, while others engage students to consider implications and
inferences of characters’ statements and actions.
After students have answered all the questions on the episode, the lesson ends with a free recall protocol (see Figure 17).
Figure 17
Free Recall Protocol
This display instructs students to write a detailed summary of what they
remember in the scrolling field of the Worksheet window. When they click
on the Finished button, the program saves their summary to disk for review by the instructor.7
The series of lessons for La Marée et ses secrets allows beginning students to view video material that they would not likely be able to understand otherwise and gives a very complete view of their comprehension of
76
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
the content of that material. The design of the lessons—dividing the longer
video text into shorter segments, presenting general and scene-specific
advance organizers, verifying students’ comprehension at various levels
of understanding, and providing an opportunity for students to express
their understanding of the video text in their own words—serves to create
a rich language learning environment.
Modeling appropriate listening comprehension strategies and guiding
their use in a multimedia course helps students to acquire the skills they
need to understand other oral (and perhaps written) texts. It remains to
investigate to what extent students transfer skills acquired in controlled
CALL environments to processing information from other texts that have
not been pedagogically prepared for language learners.
CONCLUSIONS
The development of the Libra authoring system and courseware created
by means of it offer a number of lessons learned. The original motivation
for Libra was to develop an easy-to-use, flexible authoring system supported by relevant theoretical precepts and teaching practices and maintain a clear instructional focus on listening comprehension. As we conducted faculty authoring workshops, we discovered that with little training faculty were able to use Libra’s authoring tools to create innovative
lessons that met the educational requirements of their individual institutions. In addition, the use of the authoring system by multiple developers
provided invaluable lessons to the project team and helped us refine the
product. Responding to requests by developers for new features and observing the diverse ways in which faculty authors used Libra enabled us to
improve the authoring system in subsequent versions.
However, we also discovered that helping some faculty authors to understand the importance of basic principles of instructional design and
the implementation of concepts derived from research in listening comprehension was a substantially greater challenge than guiding them through
the technical use of Libra’s authoring procedures. Because issues of lesson design and instructional principles are of primary importance in the
development of effective multimedia courseware, we had to devote more
time to discussing them than originally anticipated.
It is commonplace to note that technology is a tool, not a method; that
is, technology should serve teaching methodology, not the other way around.
Our experience working with faculty authors has shown this statement to
be very true. Some faculty authors easily became enamored with technological tools at the expense of methodological considerations. As faculty
authors continue to develop multimedia materials, it is essential that they
begin the development process by addressing questions of instructional
Volume 17 Number 1
77
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
design and then implement appropriate pedagogical features in support of
that design.
The development of the courseware described here also included several important lessons. After initial specification of the instructional components and the overall design of the series of lessons, the developer created a prototype of the first lesson. He of course planned to have this
prototype reviewed by consultants, who in fact provided helpful advice
and guidance. He also planned to pilot the lesson with students but seriously underestimated the value of students’ views of the lesson. Piloting
of the prototype included observation of individual students using the lesson and a formative evaluation questionnaire focusing on its component
parts. Analysis of the data collected by both techniques showed that several improvements were needed, ranging from explicit, yet concise, procedural directions to more clearly stated roles for instructional components
and more balanced control of student navigation through the lesson. These
lessons learned are discussed below
Similar to the traditional psycholinguistic principle of presenting only 5
± 2 bits of information at one time (see, for example, Clark & Clark,
1977), the developer learned that the number of pieces of explanatory
information in a single display should be limited to 3 ± 2. Observations of
students’ use of the preliminary version of the lesson indicated that they
were able to deal with at most five informational elements and that this
number exceeded the capacity of some students (leading to quizzical looks
suggesting that these students did not know what they were to do).
Analysis of student questionnaire data revealed that many students did
not take advantage of certain kinds of instructional components (help
screens in particular) because they were not aware of the availability of
these components. Subsequent analysis of tracker data confirmed many
of these findings and revealed other findings on misuse of basic lesson
components and unexpected patterns of navigation through the lesson.
Taken together, the results of these analyses led the developer to design a
more closely controlled environment in which students’ latitude in the use
of lesson components is somewhat restricted. It should be noted in this
regard that the courseware remains a work in progress and may be further
refined as more student data are collected and analyzed.
The primary message that emerged from our joint experience in training
faculty to use the authoring system and from this developer’s experience
in creating the multimedia courseware described here is that instructional
design needs to be the central concern in any development process. Questions about the value of implementing underlying language acquisition
principles and design features in lessons need to be addressed by empirical investigation in the formative evaluation stages of the project. Analysis
of student usage data (and eventual student performance data) is the linchpin in the development of effective multimedia materials.
78
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
NOTES
1
Some of the major works in the field at the time were Altman (1989, 1990),
Bacon and Finneman (1990), Bernhardt (1984), Bransford and Johnson (1972),
Byrnes (1984), Canale et al. (1984), Carrell (1981, 1983, 1984, 1988a, 1988b),
Chaudron and Richards (1986), Faerch and Kaspar (1986), Gernsbacher (1990),
Green (1989), Johnson-Laird (1983), Joiner (1986), Kintsch (1974), Long (1989),
Mueller (1980), Oller (1985), O’Malley et al. (1989), Richards (1983), Salomon
(1979), Schank (1982), Singer (1990), Swaffar et al. (1991), and van Dijk and
Kintsch (1983).
2
Version 2.0 of Libra is described in this article.
3
A fifth question format, an open response question format, has been added to
the most recent version of the authoring system.
4
Faculty at the University of Colorado and the University of Minnesota have
developed extensive Libra materials. Brian Lewis at the University of Colorado
and Jenise Rowekamp at the University of Minnesota have been instrumental in
guiding Libra development efforts at these two institutions. Jeff High at the University of Minnesota recently obtained a grant to develop first-year German materials using Libra. In addition, Claire Bartlett at Rice University and Edward Dixon
at Georgetown University have played key roles in helping faculty at these institutions develop significant Libra materials. A project team at the University of Michigan headed by Raji M. Rammuny has obtained a multiyear grant to create materials in Arabic with Libra. Finally, graduate students at the Catholic University of
America have been taking language learning technology modules in which Libra
has figured prominently (see Kassen & Higgins, 1997).
5
The lessons described below were created with version 2.0 of Libra.
6
Block (1986) proposed the idea of the “text map” that shows the internal structure of texts to facilitate ESL students’ reading comprehension. In addition, Mayer
and Gallini (1990) investigated the use of pre-task and in-task schematic models
to assist students’ comprehension of technical materials.
7
Libra’s tracker captures students’ writing and all mouse clicks in text files either
saved on the hard disk of the computer or sent to an e-mail address in a local area
network. The tracking mechanism allows researchers to collect substantial data
to investigate how students use multimedia CALL materials and to explore other
issues in Second Language Acquisition.
REFERENCES
Altman, R. (1989). The video connection: Integrating video into language teaching. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company.
Altman, R. (1990). Toward a new video pedagogy: The role of schema theory and
discourse analysis. IALL Journal of Language Learning Technologies,
23, 9-16.
Volume 17 Number 1
79
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
Bacon, S., & Finnemann, M. (1990). A study of the attitudes, motives, and strategies of university foreign language students and their disposition to authentic oral and written input. Modern Language Journal, 74, 459-473.
Bernhardt, E. (1984). Toward an information processing perspective in foreign
language reading. Modern Language Journal, 68, 322-331.
Block, E. (1986). The comprehension strategies of second language readers. TESOL
Quarterly, 20, 463-494.
Bransford, J., & Johnson, M. (1972).Contextual prerequisites for understanding:
Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 717-726.
Byrnes, H. (1984). The role of listening comprehension: A theoretical base. Foreign Language Annals, 17, 317-329.
Canale, M., Child, J., Jones, R., Liskin-Gasparro, J., & Lowe, Jr., P. (1984). The
testing of reading and listening proficiency: A synthesis. Foreign Language Annals, 17, 389-391.
Carrell, P. (1981). Culture-specific schemata in L2 comprehension. In R. Orem &
J. Haskel (Eds.), Selected papers from the ninth Illinois TESOL-/BE annual conference and the first midwest TESOL conference (pp. 123-132).
Champaign, IL: Illinois TESOL/BE.
Carrell, P. (1983). Three components of background knowledge in reading comprehension. Language Learning, 33, 183-207.
Carrell, P. (1984). The effects of rhetorical organization on ESL readers. TESOL
Quarterly, 18, 441-469.
Carrell, P. (1988a). Some cases of text-boundedness and schema interference in
ESL reading. In P. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. Eskey (Eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading (pp. 101-113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carrell, P. (1988b). Interactive text processing: Implications for ESL/second language reading classrooms. In P. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. Eskey (Eds.),
Interactive approaches to second language reading (pp. 239-259). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chaudron, C., & Richards, J. (1986). The effect of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures. Applied Linguistics, 7, 113-127.
Clark, H. C., & Clark, E. V. (1997). Psychology and language: An introduction to
psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Faerch, C., & Kaspar, G. (1986). The role of comprehension in second-language
learning. Applied Linguistics, 7, 257-274.
Fischer, R. (Ed.). (1997). Technology for language learning: Faculty authored Libra courseware. San Marcos, TX: Southwest Texas State University Press.
Fischer, R., & Farris, M. (1995). The instructional basis of Libra. The IALL Journal
of Language Learning Technologies, 28, 15-46.
Gernsbacher, M. (1990). Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
80
CALICO Journal
Robert Fischer and Michael Farris
Green, G. (1989). Pragmatics and natural language understanding. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Johnson-Laird, P. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language,
inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Joiner, E. (1984). Listening from the inside out. Foreign Language Annals, 17,
335-338.
Kassen, M., & Higgins, C. (1997). Meeting the technology challenge: Introducing
teachers to language-learning technology. In M. Bush & R. Terry (Eds.),
Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (pp. 263-285). Lincolnwood,
IL: National Textbook Company.
Kintsch, W. (1974). The representation of meaning in memory. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Long, D. (1989). Second language listening comprehension: A schema-theoretic
perspective. Modern Language Journal, 73, 32-40.
Mayer, R., & Gallini, J. (1990). When is an illustration worth ten thousand words?
Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 715-726.
Mueller, G. (1980). Visual contextual cues and listening comprehension: An experiment. Modern Language Journal, 64, 335-340.
Oller, J. (1985). Episodic organization and language acquisition. In S. Williams
(Ed.), Humans and machines (pp. 128-144). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
O’Malley, J. M., Chamot, A., & Küpper, L. (1989). Listening comprehension strategies in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 10, 418-437.
Richards, J. (1983). Listening comprehension: Approach, design, procedure. TESOL
Quarterly, 17, 219-240.
Salomon, G. (1979). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Schank, R. (1982). Dynamic memory: A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Singer, M. (1990). Psychology of language: An introduction to sentence and discourse processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Swaffar, J., Arens, K., & Byrnes, H. (1991). Reading for meaning: An integrated
approach to language learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wittig Davis, G. (1999). Review of Drehort Neubrandenburg Interaktiv. CALICO
Journal, 16 (4), 596-605.
Volume 17 Number 1
81
Libra and and CALL Multimedia Courseware
AUTHORS’ BIODATA
Robert Fischer is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of
Modern Languages at Southwest Texas State University. He has been active in CALL for many years and has directed several grant-funded development projects, most recently a project on using the Gemini authoring
system to enhance foreign language reading. He is currently Executive
Director of CALICO.
Michael Farris is Director of Media Services and co-director of the Alkek
Technology Institute at Southwest Texas State University. He developed
the Libra and Gemini authoring systems and is currently working with the
University of Michigan’s FIPSE-funded project to create multimedia language and culture applications for Arabic. He is also designing
SWTeleCommunity, a multipoint interactive television network for Southwest Texas State University.
AUTHORS’ ADDRESSES
Robert Fischer
Department of Modern Languages
Southwest Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
Phone: 512/245-2360
Fax:
512/245-8298
E-mail: rf02@swt.edu
Michael Farris
Division of Media Services
Southwest Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
Phone: 512/245-2319
Fax:
512/245-3168
E-mail: mf03@swt.edu
82
CALICO Journal