LEVERAGE News 3

LEVERAGE
LEarn from Video Extensive Real Atm Gigabit Experiment

LEVERAGE News No 3, September 1997

Welcome | Co-ordinator | Technophile | InterACTS | Conference report

Pedagogical issues
Katherine Maillet, associate professor at the Institut National des Télécommunications in Evry looks at the results of the recent LEVERAGE end-user survey from a pedagogical point of view.
Those of us directly implicated in the development and deployment of advanced communications technologies and services (ACTS) naturally assume that they will benefit anyone whose personal and/or professional centres of interest depend on the dynamic exchange of information in the form of text, sound, images and video. But to what extent is this view shared by the general public, which services are preferred, and to which professional sectors should these services be more especially targeted? Finding answers for these questions was the objective of a survey conducted by the LEVERAGE consortium this year.
Education and training sector: 'interest' in different ACTS services (weighted results)
The academic and industrial members of the consortium pooled their diverse expertise to design a questionnaire which aimed to identify potential user interest with regards to eighteen different ACTS services. The services defined in the questionnaire range from those which are already relatively well-known and widely used, like e-mail and networked computing, to those, like video on demand, for which the development of applications to date is limited. In an attempt to differentiate interest from intent to purchase, respondents were asked to rate these services, first according to ‘interest’, and then according to ‘priority’. The questionnaire also asked respondents to identify their field of activity among six application areas including: education and training; telecommunications; company; medical; entertainment and home. Starting in October 1996 each of the eight LEVERAGE partners sent at least 50 questionnaires to potential users. By February 1997, 123 responses had been received for 1,500 questionnaires sent. This sample yields a 48% return from respondents in the education and training sector, 20% from telecommunications, 15% from company, 7% medical, and the remaining 10 % from entertainment, home and other combined.
An analysis of the sample data made it possible to rank the eighteen ACTS services listed in the questionnaire according to the degree of user ‘interest’ and ‘priority’ and to compare the ranking of services provided by results from the educational sector with the results from the business sector. Globally the results from the survey indicate a strong interest for the majority of services described in the questionnaire. As an example, the graph above shows how the eighteen services rank after calculating their weighted scores provided by data from respondents in the education and training sector. The results demonstrate that interest is highest for services which are already widely available to a large public.
Breakdown of comments (all respondents)
In addition to attributing a numerical rating for each service, 56% of the respondents added written commentary in the space provided. An analysis of the commentary was made and the results show that the qualitative data substantiate the quantitative results. Commentary can be broadly broken down into nine categories. Two of these demonstrate interest: ‘Already implemented’ and ‘Suggestion for implementation’. ‘Cost’, ‘Poor technical quality’, ‘Security problems’, ‘Prefer face to face’, ‘Need training’, ‘Too much information’ are six areas where respondents expressed reservations about ACTS services. As can be seen in the pie chart, comments in the combined categories of ‘Already implemented’ and ‘Suggestion for implementation’ represent 74% of the opinions expressed, far outweighing the 17% of commentaries expressing reservations. During the next market research phase, the LEVERAGE partners will be looking at how the results of this survey correlate with other market studies. A certain number of respondents have already expressed interest in sharing their experiences and information in the field.
What conclusions can we as language teachers draw from the results from the LEVERAGE survey? Advanced communications technologies and services are rapidly penetrating the workplace and the home. These services are attractive to potential users and as they are increasingly made available and affordable to users they will continue to become an integral part of our lifestyles and more importantly our students’ lifestyles. Communications is our core business, and one of our many roles in the future will most certainly be to engineer pedagogical frameworks which coherently integrate ACTS services into existing local practice. Selected communications technologies will necessarily vary among language centres. Appropriate solutions will be chosen which best support targeted linguistic objectives, ranging from acquisition, assimilation, to acculturation and the methodology adapted to preferred learning styles, be it autonomous learning, flexible and distance learning, or even face to face!