A Virtual Environment
For the Promotion
Of Language Learning
Language Learning Activities
of Babel-M is to investigate the potential of 3-D virtual-reality
environments for the creation of communities which can be used for
the learning of second and foreign languages. It is intended that
there should be the highest level of theoretical weight behind this
project, at the same time as using knowledge of the technology to
achieve this in practice in the most effective way.
of computer mediated communication (CMC) being used to create and
foster collaborative, or even competitive, multi-user environments
has become well established since 1980 when the first Multi-user dungeon
(MUD) was created. However, it is only now that technology has developed
to the extent that real-time interactivity in 3-D is possible for
limited financial outlay. The main question that needs to be investigated
is whether this type of technology can be used successfully to facilitate
language learning. A second consideration that needs to be considered
is whether there may be some reason for concern over possible excessive
use of CMC for socialization.
information outlines the specification for a working environment that
could evolve into a fully-functional, multi-language virtual environment.
The environment will incorporate the latest models of constructionist
learning at the same time as using traditional methodologies. This
is because it is essential to utilise a wide range of pedagogy to
convince the often conservative teaching profession, and students.
to participate in innovative and technologically impressive projects
initially appears quite simple. Logging on to the Adobe Atmosphere
web-site shows this as it is a popular site for various reasons. This
fact can be misleading though, a fundamental problem with online communities
is capturing a solid base of users to work together on developing
the environment in a sustainable manner. For example, many users will
log on to such environments once and never return, preferring to use
their own, established messenger networks. For this reason the users
of the advanced features of the site will be invited from a variety
of language schools and universities. This means that use can be controlled
and also encouraged by the external influence of teachers using participation
as an assessed component of language courses and integrating it into
teacher led CALL classes. The software that is being considered for
this project allows chat logging which is useful for assessment, research
and, most importantly, for the true evaluation of students’
strengths and weaknesses.
After these primary
users there would be several other interested parties; teachers, researchers
(be they concerned with linguistics or the social aspects of computers),
students of CALL, software developers and finally builders who would
be selected from any of the other groups. The different users would
all have the ability to have some influence over the evolution of
the community. In line with the ideals of its development, the utmost
effort would be made to ensure that pertinent decisions were subject
to group negotiation.
To foster a sense
of power, control and belonging in student users, certain worlds will
be customizable by users at run-time. There is the possibility for
users to select the décor and audio of rooms at run-time, which
will take effect on their own computer, or if there is a pedagogical
need on all the computers connected to that instance of the world.
Conventional web discussion boards will also be used for students
to discuss and plan the design of any expansion of the environment.
There is scope for the addition of worlds to the environment as it
is possible to access hyperlinks by typing commands into the chat
box. This would require the user to have write access to the web host
for adding hyperlink sub-worlds.
The web is essentially
a modular medium and the use of open source code in the form of HTML
This allows a large amount of flexibility in the way the community
is constructed. The file system can be organized in such a way that
core worlds will only be changed by group negotiation. However, the
distribution of servers will allow teachers to have control over certain
aspects of their environments very rapidly as teaching demands require.
As Atmosphere loads textures and audio as separate files it only requires
a simple upload to update teaching materials without having to change
the fundamental structure of the world.
The initial design
of the environment will include a number of worlds which will have
specific pedagogical aims. These will be more structured and controlled
than social and cultural areas, containing activities with various
amounts of task prescription which will facilitate the use of various
language features and functions. Teachers will have the ability to
suggest and specify new types of activity that designers would implement.
There would be the possibility for CALL students and academic researchers
to prototype and evaluate experimental and perhaps controversial language
have some freedom to add features to the world but they would need
to earn this right by demonstrating some exemplary behaviour over
an extended period as the world will essentially be a meritocracy.
The security and rights for builder access can be controlled through
conventional means, files uploads can be through FTP, or perhaps CGI
pages for the upload of single files like textures and audio clips.
It has to be noted that Atmosphere can use the same types of security
as normal HTML pages but this security is not as simple to implement
at the moment. This means that it is possible for anyone to link their
own web-page or Atmosphere world to our site, if they have the URL.
CGI scripters if the project is to develop to its full potential as
a living, breathing entity.
A final point
when considering users, which may well be difficult to implement,
is the possibility of using tandem learning. This concept has involved
the pairing of speakers who want to learn each other’s languages.
They support each other in the construction of linguistic rules. It
has to be added that this requires much more discipline and reflection
than traditional pen-pal activities.
“Tandem partners need to go beyond traditional classroom methods,
not only by planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own learning
process, but by exploiting their partner’s native speaker competence
and developing an insight into the language learning process.”
In an ideal situation
there could be this type of teaching occurring between entire classes.
However, there are problems with different countries having school
holidays at different times, on top of time zone problems.
In order to have
control over specific language learning tasks and prevent the entry
of disruptive users there is a need for security. Security is a complex
issue and Atmosphere cannot use exactly the same systems as HTML as
it uses its own browser and it is quite difficult getting variables,
such as validation codes, into the virtual environments. Fortunately
there is a simple way of introducing a low level of security into
to new worlds are dynamically loaded by typing a command into the
chat box. Users need to know both the command and the name of the
hyperlink to open the new world. If there were security breaches by
students passing on the commands to friends it is possible to change
the names of hyperlinks quite simply using Windows Explorer type software,
and then pass on the new names to users. This level of security would
probably be sufficient for the period of time needed to evaluate the
true level required by the system in the longer term, as well as being
particularly cost effective.
Design of the Environment
One of the current
problems with Atmosphere is the fact that the Chat function does not
have as many features as some others. All of the users in an environment
communicate through the same chat box, this means that if there are
twenty users (the current maximum) in one room it will be very difficult
to follow the flow of conversation. There are also no built-in features
to allow for private chats, or for the “ignoring” of particular
users. Design and building of the various rooms/worlds will need to
take this into account.
Babel-M is designed
as a world portal (here portal defines the entrance to a range of
worlds) which will allow access to a wide range of language specific
worlds, which in turn will link to task or theme specific rooms. This
first contact is designed on a massive scale, as a metaphor for the
scope of the project, and the edifice is modeled on a classical representation
of the tower of Babel. There are no security constraints on entry
to this world and the limit of users is the current maximum of twenty.
Inside the tower
there are thirteen floors which are assigned to different regions
and are accessed by an elevator. In this world, and many of the others,
the ability to fly and walk through solid objects will be disabled.
This means that there can be more control over tasks and students
will have to discover how to achieve things through communicating
with other users. For example, the elevator in Babel-M is controlled
by commands typed into the chat box, these commands can be modified
to resemble natural language. Furthermore, it will only be possible
to open hyperlinks to other worlds if you are on the correct language
floor. The hyperlinks are also opened by typing commands into the
chat box, here it is essential to know the floor needed, the command
needed and the name of the desired world.
The ability to
dynamically load hyperlinks into environments allows for flexibility
in the expansion of the world. For example, to add links to worlds
requires no change to the hard coding of the environment, simple worlds
simply consisting of a hyperlink are added to the file system. These
work as dynamic hyperlinks and there are also named entry points which
can be added to worlds to act as bookmarks.
in the hierarchy are the language worlds which can be conceptualized
as meeting places and secondary portals. A similar system of dynamically
loaded hyperlinks will be used to access task specific and themed
rooms. For example, libraries, bars, offices, games rooms and puzzles
will be included for each language. A detailed description of possible
activities and rooms will be discussed later in this document.
at the beginning of this section Atmosphere does not have specific
functions for private rooms. However, it is possible to have simple
private rooms with the maximum number of users hard-coded into them.
Therefore, if you had two friends and wanted to talk in a private
area you could use the command “go_to_world private3”,
where 3 is the number of users private3 will allow at one time. The
same world could be created for 2, 4, 5 users, and so on.
is a supporting framework of HTML and CGI powered pages. The main
pages will be the entrance, a list of users, a discussion board and
library pages. The entrance will give basic information of the theory
and purpose of Babel-M and provide access to the world, which will
be embedded in an HTML page. It is essential to embed the browser
in HTML as this ensures that access to other HTML pages is as stable
as possible. The discussion board can be used for users to give a
“hard copy” of their opinions regarding the development
and evolution of the community. The list of users will allow for the
participants to have access to information about others in the language
group while library pages will give access to associated textual information.
To ensure the
use of the environment by as many teaching professionals as possible
it is essential to give as wide a range as possible of language learning
affordances. Currently these affordances can range from totally unstructured
chat, chat in environments with a variety of conversational (or more
specifically discursive) prompts, negotiation during task completion
activities and individual interaction with unsynchronized worlds.
Although some methodologies (for example those based on behaviourism)
are out of fashion with academia this by no means suggests that they
are no longer popular with teachers.
structure which will run throughout the array of worlds is the addition
of message filtering. This procedure is essential for the functioning
of semi-natural language commands in the world but can also be extended
to control the use or misuse of words. It is possible to make lists
of disallowed words which will have various effects on messages attached
to them. For example, the excessive use of a word could cause a warning
message to appear and the message to be blocked, the use of offensive
language could cause the user to be sent to ‘hell’ and
the use of common English words would result in warnings if they were
used in LOTE situations.
communication in the world it is suggested that only the simplest
and most essential of commands are given out to new users. Additional
commands and tips will need to be discovered either by exploration
and the understanding of language based clues, or by the fostering
of relationships with established users.
does not support the easy synchronization of worlds which means that
some of the more creative tasks will remain in the planning stage.
At some point in the future it would be interesting to have an environment
in which the users had to govern in a sustainable manner considering
social and natural concerns. However, this is currently beyond the
scope of the project. Despite this there are many possible tasks that
and smooth the use by class-based teachers it is possible to transfer
some established tasks into the electronic medium. The added dimension
of virtual distance can be used effectively in information gap activities.
A common task with low level learners is the description of two pictures
with small differences between them. This requires discipline on the
part of learners as they can, and often do, simply look at each other’s
picture. If this activity was conducted in a virtual room with the
pictures on opposite sides of a wall it would be impossible to cheat.
A similar use of pictures is made in the Cambridge suite of general
English exams for higher level learners. Pictures are provided as
discursive prompts (I believe that “discursive” is a more
appropriate descriptor for the type of communication expected here)
and a wide range of linguistic functions are expected here. There
could be topic-based galleries of images connected with cultural and
international concerns that students could explore. Taking this immersion
into prompts one stage further there is the possibility to create
worlds that are discursive prompts in their own right by putting students
into unusual situations. For example, students could be transported
to the seabed or the peak of Everest to encourage visualization and
derived from class use is the common part game where an object has
to be described without using some previously prescribed words. For
example, if we were considering the word “teacher” we
would be prohibited from using the words; student, school, class,
blackboard or subject. The chat filtering feature would allow this
prohibition to be enforced by not allowing those messages through.
Similar to this would be a world containing large objects that were
difficult to see in their entirety and students would have to hypothesise
about them and only be allowed to progress if the object was guessed
A very powerful
information gap activity can be constructed by using the fact that
the worlds are not synchronized. It is possible to create quite large
and complicated worlds and there can also be many different entrances
to these worlds. A command in the entry world could generate a random
portal that would send the user to one of these entrances. Once the
participants were in the world they would be able to communicate in
the chat box, but be in different areas. Their task could be to find
each other and the exit portal before they were able to leave the
world. The teacher could be waiting in the exit room to ensure that
they all entered at the same time.
has the built-in chat feature it is easy to forget that it can also
be used as stand-alone software, without the collaborative features.
It could be used for creating 3-D multimedia environments with computer-based
students individual exploratory tasks led by script based audio or
text instructions. Being able to follow a sequence of audio instructions
also be used to create interactive resources or 3-D movies of events
to facilitate the learning of vocabulary.
Finally the chat
in Atmosphere could be combined with the external discussion boards
to coordinate decisions about the development of the community. Following
the example given by the Adobe homeworlds it is possible to add billboards
advertising future events, such as a debate or vote about the design
the event will take place relative to UCT (universal coordinated time),
an important fact to consider when participants cross multiple time
the modular nature of Atmosphere is very useful. For items discussed
in this section it is possible to specify rigid attributes that will
allow for the simple swapping of features. The pixel size of picture
activities and billboards can be made public so that work and teacher-led
activities can be submitted without causing any difficulties for the
world builders. Exhibitions could be held where the submissions could
be chosen for inclusion in the world, or there could be certain areas
where all submissions were allowed on display.
social aspect will be added in some rooms to foster a feeling of belonging
to the community and having individual control. This will be the ability
to change certain aspects within your own instance of a world. Decoration,
pictures and audio can be customised and will act only on your computer.
This facility can be used so users can express their individuality,
without affecting others.
With a view to
encouraging participation by possibly skeptical teachers there are
several possible avenues for research in this environment. The two
main ones that I would pursue are direct, quantitative research on
language output and qualitative surveys of user satisfaction and their
perception of their learning. These two avenues are the most important
from my point of view because the results can be used by teachers
to evaluate how worthwhile the project would be if they joined.
As has been discussed
many times it is virtually impossible to determine the true effectiveness
of any language program, due to a virtually infinite number of aspects
that can contribute to the process, the products and attitudes towards
it. However, as some of the tasks possible in Babel-M are derived
from class activities it is possible to conduct some form of comparative
investigation to see if the media has an appreciable effect on output.
The comparison could be between the oral output given in a traditional
class situation, chat output given in a standard chat room using hard-copy
prompts and then chat output given within the virtual environment.
Ideally this would be carried out on as large a population as possible.
Presumably there would be little difference between the two forms
of CMC, but this research might provide interesting results.
There can also
be comparitive research carried out on logs taken before and after
the use of a disallowed word filter. Although refusing the use of
certain words can be considered a particularly behaviourist form of
encouraging students to notice their own output, this feature would
probably produce measurable results. The comparison could also be
made indirectly by comparing the use of language in the free production,
social rooms before and after the use of a disallowed word filter
in task-based worlds.
If this feature
was found to be effective it could be extended to include lists of
words that were selected from logs of the worlds. Logs could be analysed
statistically to check for excessive use, or common mistakes and the
of student attitudes and perceptions could be administered and used
as program evaluation tools or even market research. Results from
this could be used to improve the functionality and levels of use
of the world. They could also be used in conjunction with the quantitative
measures to encourage new language groups to join.
which might prove enlightening would be a study of the use of gesture
by avatars and the design of individual avatars. Gestures could be
categorized and then a study of collocations between words and gestures
could be made. Again this could be compared to worlds in which avatars
were unable to use gestures. A vital question is whether the gestures
inhibit or promote the use of traditional language within the virtual
environment. The design of avatars may be seen to represent various
features of socialization and the development of identity. It is entirely
possible for users to change sex, to become androgynous, or even become
a different species and a study of the extent of these changes could
give valuable insight into the relationship between reality and virtual
reality. The possibility that the design of avatars may influence
the linguistic features of communication would be an interesting sphere
of research. Drama has some history in language teaching and virtual
reality can facilitate the integration of this into classes seamlessly.
To foster the exploration of different identities there could be archives
of avatars created which would support different roles; police, children,
politicians and so on. Communication under these different roles could
be compared to the same activity without avatars designed for the
in the introduction there are some aspects of CMC and computer use
in education that need to be taken into account. Firstly there is
well -documented fact that it is possible for people to become addicted
to chat and MUDs. A common cry amongst “normal” people
is that these people should “get a life”. However, it
has been suggested that young people use these facilities excessively
due to the unlimited possibilities for social contact they present.
fact, and the justifiable concern that some educational professionals
may have about institutionalizing this type of activity, it is also
necessary to give students information about this facet of CMC. Students
and teachers should be made aware of the negative aspects before they
enter the environment. There should be support and counseling facilities
provided for all the participants to make use of. In addition, some
form of on-going monitoring of the use of the environment should be
made from within classes.
environments there is the possibility that form may overshadow the
function. The design of Babel-M is necessarily massive, to provide
a metaphor for its extent and range. It is essential that the underlying
theory is made clear as a feature which underlies the superficial
appearance. There might be the necessity of having HTML pages open
up when entering task-based worlds which would give a breakdown of
the task and methodology behind it. The fact is that any simulation
activity will be considered a game by some users, so the fundamental
aim of such simulation needs to be made clear. As the technology develops
the environment will become much more of a simulation and take on
many aspects of computer gaming. There will need to be controls put
on this to ensure that the use of language to succeed in tasks is
a continuous thread.
one of two VRML authoring environments currently available. It is
in competition with an established product called Active Worlds which
has some history of academic and commercial use. Atmosphere is currently
free and the all chat is routed through an Adobe server, this is one
possible reason for the lack of world synchronization. Active Worlds
supplies a free browser but the builder and server, which is essential
for the running of environments, are commercial products. At first
sight there is little to choose between Atmosphere and Active Worlds.
The only readily visible difference is the fact that chat in AW appears
directly above the avatar which is “speaking”, this is
a definite advantage when worlds have multiple users. However, on
more careful investigation we can see that AW supports world building
and synchronization through its programming language and dedicated
server. Unfortunately this language is more complicated than Atmosphere’s
is one of the simplest professional programming languages, and is
the web-standard in HTML and Flash pages, this could be considered
as a major advantage.
advantage of these types of software are the readily available components
and scripts which have been developed by the companies concerned and
the web-community at large. This allows for the rapid creation of
rooms and worlds by amateurs and professionals alike. There is no
need for a high level of knowledge of the software before worlds can
be made. It is obvious that this would empower all levels of participants
in the project.