Genre-is-any | Thomas' Work Space

Setting up tutor support for Hybrid Spanish in the LRC, from 1-on-1 to Emporium

2013/09/20 plagwitz Leave a comment

The LRC can answer the Hybrid Spanish need to move tutoring into the LRC in a variety of ways, depending on scale of need:
immediately on a small scale, using its small group rooms:
1. 1-2 seats next to the tutor (lrcroomcoed433d) plus space for 1-2 students to wait in line (lrcroomcoed433). Group room 2 is the one along the wall next to the door. Not more than 2 students will fit there – on the sofa – at a time, with the tutor sitting at the desk. Since there is no space, other students cannot crowd the space/hog the tutor, but will be forced to move.
2. Other Hybrid Spanish students can line up in lrcroomcoed433 (what we made into the “iMacs Faculty” room for you), and work in the online textbook while they wait online even when the other tutors (which we are going to move in there for you, see room calendar) use up the iMacs next to the door.
3. The group rooms are merely my personal “hack” to make the LRC fit the changing departmental needs better. Our renovation proposal asked for more standard facilities, but we could secure only a couple of man hours to move our existing furniture. The hacked group rooms are small (photo included here), not (unlike proposed) sound proof and that the area in front of the reception desk with 3 customer lines can get rather busy when assistants help students, faculty and tutors. The LRC help desk constantly has students and teachers asking for help and checking out equipment, media, and starting proctored quizzes, sometimes in lines.
4. Whiteboard: the department has installed the whiteboard in lrcroomcoed434 last year. Hybrid Spanish can use it there, or if the department has the funds, they could buy another and install it in group room 2. In the group room, for 1 on 1 tutoring, Hybrid Spanish could use the computer instead. Would it help at all Hybrid Spanish if we installed a 2nd screen, keyboard and mouse on this computer?
5. “in person sign-in“: I’d be more than happy to help Hybrid Spanish look into how the LRC calendars could be used for students signing up for time slots with tutors, in a location easily readable and writable to all students – I have been meaning to do this for a long time for our tutors that are in only for a few hours per week. However, the need for setting up a restrictive sign-in could be alleviated by having a line where students at least can continue working on online Puntos at a a computer by themselves (=lrcroomcoed433), or, even better, can flexibly work on online Puntos , get help from a tutor, continue working on online Puntos, ask more help from a tutor.
on a medium scale:
1. If Hybrid Spanish need to accommodate more than 4-5 students – combined tutoring and lining up – at a time, I’d recommend using up the right half of the main classroom lrcroomcoed434 for this, even if not for a supervised/blended human/online homework session using the Sanako.
2. Hybrid Spanish tutors could just move between the computers pedestrian-wise, manage the queue of students manually etc. At least Hybrid Spanish would have plenty of space to accommodate all students that show up, including the pile-ups we have experience.
Large scale via “hybrid tutoring” using Sanako:
1. On a larger scale (which we may encourage tutor-seeking students to create once they see we are able to scale this way), I could show Hybrid Spanish tutors how they could use the SANAKO to monitor and help students via screensharing, manage a queue of students “calling” for help (including the students seeing how they progress in the queue), send text messages and webpages to students, or fully remote control their computers to help or collaborate with them. Tutors can also form groups to address more than 1 student at a time, address all students present via the Sanako, or simply use the projector to demonstrate to them all. Or, as said, use the lrcroomcoed434 whiteboard (it is at the other end of the classroom from the teacher podium, we should change that, lots of teachers want to rather see their student’s faces when lecturing, they can see the students’ screen now through the Sanako).
2. Hybrid Spanish students would not have to leave and with the SANAKO (or without, but not as easily) could queue up to ask questions, when they need to, or even be proactively monitored and helped by the tutors, I realize that our tutor are students also and that we do not want to overtax them. I do not know why Hybrid Spanish students hang around. However, the emporium at other universities was introduced as a go-to area for students that feel lost. The LRC would love to be that go-to area for language students here, provided we have the tools to help the students find their way – I think we have some, and would love to show Hybrid Spanish how Hybrid Spanish can take advantage of them. Of course everything that involves 1600 students per term needs to be carefully planned, especially with our limited seats in the LRC.
3. When we last tried to share the classroom with Spanish tutoring, we had incidents with teachers no wanting the tutors there, while the tutors were unwilling to move. This is why the LRC set up the group rooms in the first place. In addition, the LRC online calendars now allows the teachers to book, or cancel booking, the room on the fly, and the tutors can see this calendar on the fly. Improved communication on sharing should allow for increase in actual usage of Lrcroomcoed434, without stepping on each other’s feet: they can be prepared to move back out to their group room, when the teacher moves in (and the SANAKO allows the tutors to also force the log out of their students form the lrcroomcoed434 computers for the class moving in). We would then not formally book the classroom for Hybrid Spanish, but rather still the group room, and rely on Hybrid Spanish students moving to the group room for the time slots that classes are scheduled in the classroom (easy enough to see in the LRC calendars, either from the calendar links on the LRC homepage, or by subscribing from NINERMAIL).

Categories: proposals, service-is-tutoring, Spanish Tags: emporium, hybrid-spanish

Protected: Security alert about revocation information on LRC machines

2013/09/16 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, websites Tags: security

What to do if university websites seem to be not working, nothing happens when you click?

2013/09/14 plagwitz Leave a comment

Try and get the popup blocker on your office or lab PC fixed here (if you are on Windows 7 here, you need to use the 64-bit version): choose "Run" – preferable to “Download” and "Open".
Then use Internet Explorer to try again what you were trying to do on one of our websites.
Background:
1. My users have been reporting for a while problems getting simple things done on campus websites. Last week I observed a few in their office and in the LRC being stalled by mis- or non-configured popup blocker, and not noticing the cause, being flummoxed.
2. The above little program configures the built-in internet explorer popup blocker to allow popups from websites that are part of our infrastructure.
3. It does not attempt to configure other popup blockers, whether inside or outside of this web browser.
4. The end user could also try
  1. (holding the key:) CTRL-click on the link where your web browsing fails.
  2. Or configure the popup blocker manually.
5. However, it would likely be best if this were done via GPO…

Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, compiledcode, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, service-is-programming, web-browsers, websites Tags: autoit, internet-explorer, popup-blocker

Protected: Native speaker recordings for Voilà vocabulary

2013/09/12 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: e-languages, French, projects, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: audio, voilá

Making computerized vocabulary quizzes for use in the LRC from Prof. Koralova’s Friendly Russian textbook

2013/09/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

You can browse on the Group room PC to this folder with the

source files (read acces), you just need to look at the Word versions: S:\COAS\LCS\LRC\sanako\student\friendly-russian-docx-student-copy

In the source files, new vocabulary that the students have to learn, appears in 2 forms

1. Either under the heading “new words”, mostly with English meaning in a sparate column

2. Or in the running text, colored in red (and with no entirely obvious English translation for me who I do not speak Russian, but likely for you).

The target file is here (in most browsers other than Internet Explorer 64-bit, you should be able to open this in EXCEL for easier editing).

We need Russian and English in 2 columns. The computer program we are going to feed these flash cards into is quite simple in its automatic evaluation. That’s why we need to enable students to guess exactly the Russian from the English flash card side (and vice versa). Hence we may need to simplify the entries in both.

To give a few examples:

– Complicated lists of variants (inflected forms, similar phrases etc.) need to be broken up into separate rows

– linguistic metadata (like gender “fem.”– but maybe not articles: “la maison – das Haus” -, irregular verb) in a separate column, per language.

I included an example (from chapter 4, section 6) what I think the end result is supposed to look like:

Source example:

ти́хо (adv.) – quiet(ly); тишина́ (n.) – stillness; quiet
никогда́ – never; ти́хо, как никогда́ – quiet as never (before); когда́ – when
В чём де́ло? – idiom: What’s the matter?
ах да – oh yes
матч – match; game
почти́ – almost
ка́ждый – each; every
ме́сяц – month
всё в поря́дке (idiom)– everything is OK (lit.: everything is in order)
что ещё на́до? – what else (does one) need?

Target example:

russian	metadata	english	metadata2
Ти́хо		quiet
тишина́		stillness
тишина́		quiet
никогда́		never
ти́хо, как никогда́		quiet as never before
когда́		when
В чём де́ло?		What’s the matter?
ах да		oh yes
матч		match
матч		game
почти́		almost
ка́ждый		each
ка́ждый		every
ме́сяц		month
всё в поря́дке		everything is OK
что ещё на́до?		what else does one need?

Hint: the easiest way to get the vocabulary charts Russian – English from Word into 2 columns in Excel: CTRL+H, “find:” space-space, “Replace”:^t (for tab), then copy/pasting the result makes 2 columns for Russian/English.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, e-languages, projects, Russian, service-is-learning-materials-creation, textbooks, Vocabulary Tags: friendly-russian, sanako-study-1200, vocabulary-test

Our Sanako Study 1200 tutor is “not responding” or crashes

2013/09/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

Update: We have been advised to
1. change the Windows Color Scheme to Basic (especially removing the desktop background on both client and teacher) and
  1. set the Tutor / Preferences / to “Slow WLAN”
  2. possibly update the video driver on the teacher station, using Windows Update or, preferably, the manufacturer’s version
  3. try to replicate the problem, but keep the Sanako logs.
2. Now we are trying to replicate he issue without the teacher station frozen, so that we have access to the logs.
2 hard crashes during one class
1. The first one
  1. on “Autoscanning” (cycling screensharing connections to student PC’s)
  4. The first one took me by surprise, the computer hung completely, I could not bring up process manager nor taskkill the tutor, had to power cycle, at considerable interruption to the the class.
  5. However, here I got some problem details from windows:
The 2nd one
1. also occurred during “Autoscanning”.
2. This time, however, not the Autoscan itself brought the system down, but only when I tried to resize the autoscan window by dragging and dropping the border (video-intensive?).
3. I got a performance notification from Windows (not legible here, but something to the amount of “your computer is dangerously slow”):
4. I managed to task kill the tutor:
5. I got some more diagnostics help from Windows which notified me that my “Windows Color scheme” had to be downgraded to “Basic”:
Dell Optiplex 760 (B6CCLK1)
1. 4GB,
2. graphics chip: Y103D Card, Graphics, 256, Loop, OUGA6; original driver Video: AMD Radeon HD3450 256M, v.8.593 WHQL Vista, A05 with DUP (101 MB)
3. dual screen (1024*768 secondary, 1920*1080 primary – I remember having hard hangs on this system when attempting to drag Autoscan Windows of Sanako Stuy 1200 Tutor ver. 5.2 across 2 dual screens of the same size on Windows XP )
4. Win 7 (64bit).
No eventvwr or Sanako log data since PC was frozen…