Using Blackboard to teach Chinese

Lessons from the online Chinese program of Charles Darwin University

by Zongmin Chen and Paul Black

Using Blackboard to teach Chinese

• The CDU Chinese program, and– How the external program works

• Special issues–with Chinese transcription and

characters, sound files, and assessment• Conclusion

The CDU Chinese program

• Charles Darwin University (CDU) beganits current program in Mandarin Chinesethanks to support from the Chinese government Chinese Language Office (Hanban).

The CDU Chinese program

• After a semester of preparation,the on-campus program began in mid 2008.

The CDU Chinese program

• Many CDU programs utilise Blackboard for external teaching — CDU calls it ‘Learnline’.

• Blackboard sites for the first-year Chinese units were first set up in 2009,but they were offered externally only in 2010.

The CDU Chinese program

• Since then the external program is gradually being extended to cover all three years of Chinese.

The CDU Chinese external program

offered/taught 2010 2011 2012 2013 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2 s1 s2CHN101 X X X X X XCHN102 X X X X X XCHN201 X X X X XCHN202 X X X X XCHN301 X X XCHN302 X X

The CDU Chinese external program

• Our external program is thus:– in its third year of teaching first year

Chinese (CHN101 and CHN102) and– in its first year of teaching second year

Chinese (CHN201 and CHN202).

How the external program works• The Chinese

program uses the popular text New Practical Chinese Reader (Beijing Language and Culture University Press).

How the external program works

• This textbook has an accompanying workbook and CDs, so it provides solid resources for external study.

• At the same time, English explanations are limited and often overly technical,e.g. they speak of tonal ‘sandhi’ and grammatical ‘directional complements’.

How the external program works

• The basic Blackboard platform is used to give external students:– guidance on using the textbook,

workbook and CDs,–details of assessment tasks, and–occasional supplementary material.

How the external program works

• Materials are presented within Blackboardand in attachments in several formats:–Microsoft Word (.doc) files,–Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files,–Powerpoint shows (.pps format),– Sound files (.mp3 format),–Graphic files (.jpg format).

How the external program works• Supplementary

materials include:– a study guide and

a few readings;– sound files of

Chinese songs;– pictures of

Chinese signs.

How the external program works

• Online classes are run each week:– to give students practice in using Chinese

and– to make sure that they understand things

that may not be clear from the textbook.• In 2010 and 2011 we used Wimba, of

course, and now we are using Blackboard Collaborate.

How the external program works

• Online class explanations and exercisesare often presented using Powerpoint,to save writing time during class.

• Whiteboard tools can be used to highlight particular points.

Here is an example of using Powerpoint:

How the external program works

• In Collaborate,the ability to take students to websitesand to applications on the lecturer’s computerare also likely to prove useful,especially in more advanced classes.

How the external program works

• The Blackboard Discussion Board is little used:– It's hard to discuss pronunciation in print

and– Beginners especially are not prepared to write:• Chinese transcription with tone marks,

e.g. mā, má, mǎ, mà, and• Chinese characters like 妈，麻，马， and

骂 .

Special issues

• Marking tone• Representing Chinese characters• Showing how to write characters• Using sound files• Handling assessment

Marking tone

• The pinyin transcription of Chineseuses tone marks above the vowels,as in mā, má, mǎ, mà and (neutral tone) ma.

• Can students see these tone marks?• Can they write them?

Marking tone

• As far as we know, students have had no problems with seeing tone marks on materials in Blackboard itself.

• We are less sure about other formats.We found we had to be very careful to make them appear properly in other .html material we prepared ourselves.

To make sure, we began the first Powerpoint lesson with this notice:

Marking tone

• Meanwhile, writing the tone marks may be difficult for most students.

• We do it easily on a Macintoshusing 'U.S. Extended' as an 'input method'.

• We have not yet learned how to do iton a Windows computer.

Marking tone

• On Blackboard students only need to show tone in online tests.

• We let them do this by writing numbers instead of tone marks:e.g. ma1 for mā, ma2 for má, and so on.

Marking tone

• In case students want to write tone marks on their word processors, we given them a page that they can cut and past them from:

ā ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ á é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ à è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ

Representing Chinese characters

• One issues has been how to include Chinese characters in materials presented through Blackboard.

• In some file formats, students may not see these characters properly unless they have the proper Chinese fonts installed on their computers.

Representing characters

• Blackboard and Collaborate do not seem to allow us to choose Chinese fonts, but if we set our computers to write in Chinese characters, these characters do appear.

• Initial tests suggest that students can also see these characters even without a Chinese font installed on their computers.

•

Representing Chinese characters

• For Microsoft Word, on the other hand, even we ourselves have problems when we do not use the same Chinese fonts across platforms.

Representing characters

• When we are not sure that our studentswill be able to see Chinese fonts,we put the material in picture form.

• For example, in a Word document,instead of writing characters like 你好 ,we use a picture: .

Representing characters

• We have tried Blackboard's Chinese language kit.

• This would allow us to put our menus in Chinese characters,but for less advanced students that would not be useful.

Showing how to write characters

• While students can learn to write characters on computers,it is also important for them to learn to write the characters properly by hand.

Showing how to write characters

• One reason this is important is sothey can read handwritten characters,which look different from printed ones.

Showing how to write characters

• Another reason is because they need to know types of strokes and the order they are made in,in order to look characters up in some dictionaries.

Showing how to write characters

• To drawn characters on the Collaborate whiteboard,we have tried to use a mouse or track pad,but the results are not good.

Drawing with a mouse is a bit like drawing with a brick.

Showing how to write characters

• Thanks to help from a colleague at CDU we are now experimenting with using a drawing tablet or an iPad.

Using sound files

• Sound files pose a problem because they seem to be handled differently on different computer systems.

• We use .mp3 files in the hope that they can be handled without difficulty.

Using sound files

• When opened within Blackboardusing the recommended Firefox browser,sound files create a separate Firefox tab containing a sound controller.

Using sound files

• On Firefox on a Macintosh the sound controller is clear:

Using sound files

• On Firefox on a Windows machine it is entirely black,although the sound can still be controlled:

Handling assessment

• At times we have wanted to develop online tests and quizzes, but our success has been mixed.Challenges have included the inability:– to include sound files in questions.–of first-year students to supply Chinese

characters as answers.

Handling assessment

• Sound files are needed to assess student ability to distinguish Chinese soundsand match them up with the right transcription,and later with Chinese characters.

Handling assessment

• When developing the external units in 2009, we did try embedding sound files in questions, and even providing characters as graphics in answers.

• Regrettably on some computers students only saw half the question and possible answers.

Handling assessment

• Now we provide sound files for students to download before starting the questions. But this is awkward:–One sound file needs to cover a number of

questions,– It is difficult to control how long students can study

the sounds.

Handling assessment

• As for Chinese characters,we can provide them either within questions or within answers.

Handling assessment

• For answers, however, first-year students are generally not preparedanswer in characters themselves.

• This tends to limit us to a multiple choice format, with students choosing among a given set of characters.

Handling assessment

• We have also tried giving studentsa list of about sixty numbered characters,so they can fill in blanks in dialogueswith the numbers of the characters.

Handling assessment

• Regrettably this complicates answering: students must scan the list for possible answers.

Handling assessment

• That we have not found ideal solutions to these problems need not mean they can't be found.

• We are still looking for solutions.

Conclusion

• CDU's Chinese program is young and it continues to develop.

• However, we believe we have been able to use Blackboard to develop the external program fairly well, and we will continue to try to make it better still.

Thank you

• Any questions?