Graduate Students Win Award

Much of the work exhibited at Odyssey '97 has won media attention and awards for its developers. Yet when they volunteered to showcase their multimedia materials for teaching German, graduate teaching assistants Caroline Schaumann, Sabine von Mering, and Christina Frei hardly expected to receive an award. In addition to their outstanding teaching, the video and multimedia computer program helped earn them a Teaching Award for Outstanding Graduate Students. The award, which is co-sponsored by the Graduate Division, the Teaching Resources Center, and the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, has never before been awarded to a group.

The three have been working as a team since Spring of 1994, first creating a 10-minute instructional video entitled "Die Konditorei," a dramatized lesson set in an Austrian cafe in downtown Davis. Pleased with its success among their students, Schaumann, von Mering, and Frei planned another project. This time the video would have a coherent plot and would feature as actors undergraduate students (rather than fellow teaching assistants). Ein blauer Schal (A blue scarf) was the result. A story of a blind date gone awry in Davis' Sudwerk brewery, the video highlights use of the passive voice, a component of German grammar which is very difficult for students to learn.

The producer, Robert Craig of Creative Communication Services (CCS) Instructional Media, suggested multimedia for their next project. Having tested instructional software available for the teaching of German and finding it lacking, they agreed to try. They applied for and were awarded a minigrant through the Teaching Resources Center, which enabled them to work on the project beginning in Fall of 1995.

Working with Craig, the three structured a CD-ROM featuring the story and images from Ein blauer Schal . The program followed the format of their German classes, and included intensive grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and culture. Explanations of grammar were provided for various levels of proficiency, and an extensive dictionary was included. Decisions about feedback, layout, and toolbars reflected the teaching assistants' desire to provide students with a positive learning experience, and to enable users to move freely from one exercise to another. Programming was provided by Brian Sher of CCS/Instructional Media.

In November, Schaumann, von Mering, and Frei will present their work, which they've titled "Community- and Student-Centered Technology: The UC Davis Project," at the annual conference of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the largest national conference for foreign language instructors.