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Sustainability and CALL: Factors for success in a context of change
Claire Kennedy
Griffith University
Mike Levy
Griffith University
A team of university Italian teachers at an Australian university has been able to obtain enduring benefits from CALL, through projects that last, and indeed grow and develop over time. The projects have focused on supporting students in effective use of out-of-class time once they reach an intermediate level of proficiency. This paper analyses the team’s 15 years of CALL experience by first examining the opportunities and constraints of the changing technological context—with rapid developments in both the types of tools available and the students’ relationships to them—and then seeking to identify aspects of the team members’ role as agents in that context that have allowed the projects to be successful despite the challenges. While we acknowledge that a certain level of skills, ability to work as a team and institutional support have been essential, we stress that the key to the success lies in three key principles that shape the team’s approach, namely: tailoring, integration and an iterative development process. Recommendations follow on strategies and techniques that we believe will assist in the sustainability of CALL over the long term in a university setting. Introduction As a culture we are susceptible to the lure of the latest technology, and our expectations of what might be achieved are often at odds with the realities. Such reactions to new technologies have been captured in Gartner’s Hype Cycle model (http://www.gartner.com/), which articulates five distinct categories or stages that occur in the emergence of any new technology, namely: Technology trigger; Peak of inflated expectations; Trough of disillusionment; Slope of enlightenment, and; Plateau of productivity. This trajectory provides a sense of how unrealistic initial expectations can quickly lead to disappointment, and the realization that it is only through extended use and systematic evaluation over time that a more reasoned assessment of the technology may be arrived at; unfortunately, this is time that typically we do not have, as yet another new technology makes its presence felt (Buckingham, 2007; Lanham, 2006; Levy, 2007a). While Gartner’s model emerged in the commercial world, it is, we believe, reflected in the educational world, although perhaps with a certain time lag, a much reduced selection of technologies than those included by Gartner, and certain differences that relate to differences in the goals and context between business and education. With respect to emerging technologies, the educational literature often reflects the broader environment in that a particular technology or group of technologies or application is initially broadcast as having the potential to revolutionise education. There is also a corresponding tendency to undervalue or underrate what has worked successfully before, simply because it does not follow the latest trend. The technology trigger and peak of inflated expectations can also generate one-off projects to investigate the value or potential of a particular application or technology, through a development project or a research study. Often, however, by the time that project or study is completed, newer technologies have arrived. In the educational literature, it is quite common therefore to see widespread discussion of a technology or application at one point in time followed by a complete absence of discussion two or three years later (the trough of disillusionment), by which time a new technology or suite of technologies is attracting all the attention. At the same time, when new technologies have proved themselves in an educational context, pressures to upgrade the necessary hardware—with decisions often taken out of the hands of teachers themselves—can lead to a situation where it is not possible to sustain good materials simply because the hardware to operate them has been superseded or replaced. Two significant implications that tend to follow from this set of circumstances are: the unwillingness of teachers to engage with a technology because no sooner will they have acquired the necessary skills and expertise than the technology will be replaced; and the challenge for educational administrators who fear the costs of continually upgrading hardware and software when the benefits appear to be transitory.
