THL Toolbox > Instructional Resources > Creating Language Instructional Materials > Creating Instructional Units Based On The Processed Recordings
Creating Instructional Units Based On The Processed Recordings
Contributor(s): THL Staff.
Situational Variables for Language Instructional Unit Role Playing
Creating instructional units based on the processed recordings
Once you have a video with rich transcript, you can begin building an actual instructional unit centered on it. Buidling an instructional unit involves creating pedagogical materials that allow for the students to study the video through a process of semi-natural comprehension and extend their mastery through a variety of exercises and tests, and enable teachers to creativey teach the audio-video within the classroom.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
The basic model we have established is for students to first try to understand the audio-video with no other resources (and certainly not the transcript) by listening to it three or four times. They then assess their comprehension level (25%, etc.) and take a provided quiz that is intended to assess if they are actually at the comprehension level. If they pass the quiz, they then study a set of "tips" designed to give them further information about the audio-video recording. Armed with these tips, they then return to the audio-video and attempt to increase their comprehension level. In this way they gradually build comprehension with the goal of arriving at roughly a 75% level. At that point, they are given access to the full resources about the audio-video - the synchronized transcript, full grammatical analysis, full vocabulary, full cultural notes and so on. Using these the student fine tunes and completes there comprehension. A variety of other exercises and exams are then provided for students to extend this comprehension, as well as engage in a variety of creative activities based upon principles covered in the unit.
THE BUILDING PROCESS
Typically we build these instructional units after transcription is complete, since much of it involves building detailed documentation and exercises that presume an already stablized transcript to call upon in creating them. Firstly, one must build up comprehensive vocabulary, grammatical and cultural annotations. This is relatively easy once a good transcript has been established. These annotations are used for student reference in the phase of achieving complete mastery of the recording's language. In addition, they are drawn upon in creating the comprehension quizzes, homework, classroom exercises and tests.
The second step is to create the comprehension quizzes. We are using a Web-based exam templating system called ExTemplate from Rice University for creating these quizzes. If Web access is difficult, the questions and answers can also be prepared in a word processing document, which can then be cut and paste into ExTemplate in a second phase. The creation of comprehension quizzes has to go hand in hand with the creation of the corresponding "tips" designed to be consulted after or before the corresponding quizzes. These "tips" sections largely just draw in information from the vocabulary, grammatical and cultural annotations. Thus the chief challenge is figuring out what information to put in what tips page so that a student who passes sequentially through each of the three quizzes/tips will incrementally acquire new information at each level.
The third step is creating post-comprehension resources. These include creation of home work assignments, in-classroom exercises and tests for student and teacher use. In addition, a "Teaching Guide" should be created to function as a handbook for a teacher to be used in implementing the instructional unit.
