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2019 LURA Winners Announced

Anonymous — Thu, 02 May 2019 22:15:29 +0000

2019 LURA Winners Announced Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/02/2019 - 16:15

The 2019 Linguistics Undergraduate Research Award (LURA) blogs have been posted on the Department of Linguistics website. Professor Kira Hall developed the LURA program while participating in the 2017-18 ASSETT Faculty Fellows cohort.

The 17 students honored were nominated for innovative research conducted in an undergraduate linguistics class during the spring 2018 and fall 2018 semesters. They are: Ana Berlova, Kieran Britt, Heraa Hashmi, Jay Hevelone, Gin Quesada Lara, Kyo Lee, Mari Marquardt, Lauren Nelsen, Tansee McReynolds, Timothy Meier, Carolyn Olmsted, Calley Peirce, Amy Sanders, Sophia Six, Camila Soffia, Cameron Sojak, and Mara Strother.

Awards are contingent on the students' successful submission of 500-1000 word blogs describing the research for which they were nominated. Students work with their nominating faculty members, GPTIs, or TAs to produce synopses of their research ideas that are both informative and accessible to a wider readership. Hall noted in her project report, submitted in May 2018:

We are pleased to report that the undergraduate blog project not only enhanced the department climate for many of our undergraduate students, it also constituted a major step forward in inspiring undergraduate involvement in the major and in the discipline... [It] advertises our linguistics courses while showcasing the work of our students to the university community and to the public.

The webpage hosting the blogs was designed by linguistics PhD student Kevin Stowe.

For more information about the Faculty Fellows program, contact Amanda McAndrew or visit the ASSETT website.

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Students Nominate Linguistics' Steve Duman for Excellence in Teaching Award

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Students Nominate Linguistics' Steve Duman for Excellence in Teaching Award Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/13/2015 - 00:00

CU ��«��Ƶ students nominated Linguistics PhD student Steve Duman for an ASSETT Award of Excellence as an Outstanding Teacher in the Use of Technology. In their nominations, students wrote that they enjoyed Duman's PowerPoint presentations in his class, Perspectives on Language, Linguistics 4100. In Linguistics 4100, Duman presents a critical examination of a few selected language topics, including the relation between language and thought. In their nominations, his students wrote that his presentations were, "... engaging, efficient, memorable, and enlightening."

PowerPoint is just one launching point for Duman's class "... to get the conversation going," he says. Duman says that he sees his PowerPoints as stories in which he tells students, "... something to get them interested and involved in the material and excited about what's coming next." To help students feel comfortable, Duman creates thoughtful introductions to class that would be accessible to most students. For example, a pop music music video may have a theme that relates to that day's topic. Duman says that in providing more accessible avenues to approach an academic topic, he really tries to encourage all students to feel comfortable contributing to class discussions.

Then, Duman says that he tries to keep his PowerPoints light on text so that students must, "... fill in the blanks," and come to their own understandings. "I want slides to be something they can engage with, and make their learning experience more engaging, and help them think about these things from a slightly different angle."

During class, Duman may challenge students to answer questions from a research study already conducted. From their discussions, students predict what the studies found. "I walk them through the study so that they experience what it's like to be a participant in the study," says Duman.

Later in the semester, students conduct their own research studies that use, "... tools that are available to them at CU." Students use statistical programs that Duman teaches in class, like Qualtrics. Qualtrics is an online survey tool that CU provides to students. In Qualtrics, the user can generate several types of questions including multiple choice. Duman says, "Students want to be challenged. They want to learn new skills."

Recently, Duman was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant for a grant that he has used to perform research that has contributed to the development of the app Nano Nano. In Nano Nano, the player follows a story arch and use gestures to learn a new language.

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Those Who Go Unnoticed

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Those Who Go Unnoticed Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/15/2013 - 00:00

A student in the back of the lecture hall leans forward in her seat. A shy freshman raises his hand for the first time. Heads nod. Eyes brighten. The pace of note taking quickens. As a teacher, these small indications that students are engaged can be exhilarating, and no one knows this better than linguistics Professor Kira Hall. “Many of my students do very well,” she says. “They are good test-takers. They ask questions in class. But then there are those who, for a long time, I couldn't seem to reach. And when I started offering the option to create video essays, there was suddenly a whole new world of talented students that I had never noticed before.”

Dr. Hall has been teaching large lecture classes in the Linguistics Department at CU ��«��Ƶ for over a decade. Years before the ubiquity

of social media, she used technology as a way to foster collaboration by encouraging her students to participate in online discussion groups. “Back then there was a lot of hesitation,” she says “But now everyone is more energetic and comfortable with technology.” Dr. Hall has always been passionate about supplementing the traditional lecture format with multimedia presentations and interactive projects including blogging and social service assignments, but she worried that a large percentage of students were struggling to produce competent essays. She thought that they just weren’t understanding the material.

The idea to offer students an alternative to writing a research paper came to her one day as she was helping her daughter with schoolwork. Sofia is a bright eight-year-old who struggles with writing. “She has sensory integration difficulties“ says Dr. Hall, “But while she has difficulty expressing her ideas in writing, she is amazing at expressing these ideas visually – in painting, in artwork, in a PowerPoint, in video.” Sofia, says Dr. Hall, has helped her to realize that her students need to be given the opportunity to learn and express themselves visually as well as verbally. “I have to remember that they are not all going to be academics,” she says. “The most important thing is that they learn the material.”

Dr. Hall has a deep appreciation for the written language, but as a linguistics scholar who studies the spoken word, she also recognizes the value of effective visual and verbal communication. “If writing was the only way that I assessed my students’ understanding of the course material, then I would miss out on a whole world of student competence and creativity,” she explains. “My experiences with my daughter have helped me see this. In all truth, she's made me a better teacher.”

When students in Dr. Hall’s Language and Gender course were given the option to write a 5-6 page essay or to create a 5-6 minute video essay, over 35% of the students chose to make a video, often with great success. These videos, often shot in the student’s dorm room, are earnest and well-researched. The students also look like they’re having fun. One student analyzes the word ‘dude’ as a discourse marker. Another, the word ‘yo’. From across his kitchen table, the student explains that ‘yo’ is popular “because of its linguistic simplicity and flexibility.” The camera then pans to a scene of two college students engaged in a lively Xbox game, a dialog interspersed with liberal exclamations of ‘yo!’ Each of these exclamations are then isolated and analyzed.

As a testament to Dr. Hall’s innovative teaching strategies, Hall was recently awarded an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award, receiving several nominations directly from her students. “I learned a lot by making a video essay and would love to make more in the future,” wrote one student nominee. “Throughout the semester, Kira constantly used videos during lecture. This helped me to understand confusing concepts,” said another. “As a freshmen, she was my favorite professor and definitely made an impact on me during my first semester of college.”

Dr. Hall's enthusiasm for teaching is genuine. “I try to teach through aural and visual modalities, not just textual ones,” she explains. “I demonstrate points in my lectures with multiple examples of language data from television, film, and everyday conversation.” Dr. Hall glances around her room, looking at the computer screen playing a student-created video and the towering shelves of books that crowd her office. “I have found that it helps this new generation of students connect to the course material. Plus it makes it fun...and shouldn't learning be fun?”

Article by: Ashley E Williams

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Development Awards: The Arapaho Project: A New Hope for an Endangered Language

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Development Awards: The Arapaho Project: A New Hope for an Endangered Language Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/06/2011 - 00:00

Like some animal species, small languages must also thwart off the threat of extinction. In particular, the Arapaho language is at risk. Luckily, though, it’s receiving some help. Andrew Cowell, a professor in the Department of Linguistics, is here to ensure this language’s survival in the 21^st century.

Reflecting on his career, Professor Cowell noted that he always possessed an interest in small, endangered languages that waver on the edge of disappearance. Being hired at CU led him to document and research the Arapaho language, as Colorado is the heartland of the Arapaho community. As Professor Cowell’s work progressed and his eminence as an Arapaho linguist scholar spread, numerous people began contacting him for help. The problem, he noticed, was that hardly any resources existed for the instruction of the language and as a result of this insight, Professor Cowell created The Arapaho Project. This online multi-media platform teaches students the grammatical nuances of the language through interactive lessons that present both the spoken and written word. With The Arapaho Project, students develop their writing skills and, more importantly, they improve their speech capabilities.

According to Professor Cowell, there are three main benefits of this project. First, the website contains a considerable amount of detail, providing students with all the grammatical lessons necessary to acquire a more thorough understanding of the language. The second benefit is that the website has exercises, which “allows you to actually practice the language as opposed to a book that just presents the language.” Lastly, the audio recordings “are a way of allowing students to get more verbal ability so they can profit more from working with the native speakers.”

Although only the initial part of this project has been completed, Professor Cowell integrated the platform into his Linguistics 3220 course, Native American Languages in their Social and Cultural Context, this semester. Comparing the class before and after the website, Cowell noted that students “learned a lot more Arapaho than ever before. They did not just have to rely on classroom content.” The Arapaho Project empowers students to learn language at their own pace outside the 150 minutes classes meet each week. With the website, students can freely interact with the platform, exploring their questions on pronunciation, grammatical quirks, and confusing syntax. There are important benefits to using this type of technology in learning Arapahoe. As Professor Cowell stated, “language is something you speak, that is the fundamental thing, and with Arapaho that’s the only thing you do. Having the technology that allows a language to be spoken is absolutely crucial.”

CU undergraduates are not the sole beneficiaries of Arapaho Project as the website is also targeted at graduate students and the Arapaho community. Professor Cowell commented, “Grad students can use this website for better learning, for better research, and integrating it into the classes they teach.” More importantly, the online website is “an outreach project for the Northern and Southern Arapaho people themselves because they do not have anything online at all to learn the language.” For many centuries, the language did not exist in a written form as it was passed on from generation to generation orally. Over the years the number of native speakers has dramatically decreased, which is the reason the language faces the risk of extinction. Through this project, the Arapaho community now possesses an instructional device to teach the younger population, which helps to ensure the language’s survival.

Ten years ago, when Professor Cowell started to learn Arapaho, he remembers that “there were no language learning materials except for a short dictionary with a tenth of the words in it.” Since then linguists have made considerable contributions to transcribing the language and creating materials, but this website is the first learning tool of its kind for Arapaho. It follows a series of instructional steps that sequentially and pragmatically build up on one another as students advance through the course.

Professor Cowell foresees that “the immediate project should be completed by the end semester”, which involves having the basic 30 lessons with sound files, all the links and text files posted to the website. After the initial phase of the project is complete, more stories, jokes, speeches, song and other Arapaho anecdotes will be added to the Arapaho Project. These additions will “give more life to the language as opposed to just sentences because it is actual people telling actual stories”, according to Professor Cowell. Clearly, this work can never be truly complete as new materials can always be added to the website.

For now, the threat of extinction can be laid to rest as the Arapaho will not disappear anytime soon due to the creation of the Arapaho Project. Professor Cowell gave the Arapaho language the necessary tools to foster, survive, and thrive in the 21^st century. Without taking these steps to preserve these small languages, we one day may face the possibility of losing them all.

Professor Cowell received an ASSETT Development Award for the Spring 2011 semester. This grant helped fund the creation of the “The Arapaho Project”. Development Awards are given out each semester to CU professors using technology to enhance education in the 21^st century.

~Written by Mark N. Sytsma, ASSETT Reporter, CU '13

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