My
first project for Holt, Rinehart and Winston I brought the Holy Bible of all
grammar texts Warriner's Grammar and Composition online. Old-testament
style editors were horrified at the notion of changing this proven, age-old
text even one bit. It seemed we would be destined to produce software that
was little more than a static book on a screen.
I
approached a reticent senior editorial staff by demonstrating how animation
was not restricted to pictures. Text itself could be animated to clarify difficult
concepts, and could be coupled with narration in both English and Spanish.
The notion that the well-established content of Warriner's could not only
survive changes but might significantly be improved by them began to take
hold. In a traditional print-publishing culture, this was radical thinking.
More
difficult still was my effort to disabuse senior managment of the belief that
computer-based testing was the strongest and most valid reason for creating
a complete Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics course online. I fought to include
numerous unscored Practice activities... a reprieve, small perhaps, from the
mind-addling drills of traditional text-based grammar quizzes.
The
positive effect of these unscored practice activities was significant. Student
interest in the instructional sequences that preceded practice items was remarkably
greater. In formative evaluations we confirmed the necessity of frequent unscored
practice and identified best-practice for delivering feedback. Summative evaluations
later showed that classroom instruction with Language Workshop corresponded
with significant improvements in student performance on diagnostic tests as
compared to instruction with printed materials alone.
Having
won support for instructional presentation and unscored practice, next I relied
on the early enthusiasm for computer-scored exercises and designed a large
number of varied templates for scored exercises.
I
designed twenty different templates, each of which provided detailed feedback
and recorded the results of multiple attempts for each student in an integrated
classroom management system.
The
task of training editors to review and revise multimedia storyboards for such
a wide variety of interaction templates was it's own sort of educational process.
At full throttle, I had fifteen editors supplying content and revisions to
three programmers, twenty multimedia authors, and four artists.
In an effort to address the "Why Bother?"
questions that students rightfully ask, we included free-writing prompts with
lively art and ideas that prompted students topay attention to relevant grammar
concepts which appeared in the preceeding instruction, practice, and scored
exercises.
Without a doubt, much more could have been
done to emphasize writingas the context and purpose of mastering the rules
of grammar. A more active, learner-centered,and peer-collaborative application
should have been realized, however, for the first-ever transformation of the
company's sacred text "Warriner's Grammar and CompositionHandbook"
the 7 level CD-ROM series that we did achieve was a success. Language Workshop
won several awards, including the Gold Medal at the CINDY's
for best educational software, and is currently used in thousands of schools
and universities worldwide.
