Julio C Rodriguez, CLT Director

Center for Language & Technology

The Center for Language & Technology (CLT) has a long history of service to the college and the university. Established in 1956, the CLT now serves as the primary hub for technology in language education. It's mission is to support the informed use and integration of technology into instruction and research in the curriculum of the College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature.

As director of the CLT, the projects I oversee can be classified into two main categories, namely instructional and operational. Instructional projects include curated collections of resources for language learning and professional development as well as the design, development, and implementatio of instructional interventions. Operational projects include the creation of standard operating procedures and policies for the CLT (e.g., facility use policies, equipment loan policies, etc.), the creation of departmental bylaws, and the conceptualization, design, and creation of physical shared spaces that support teaching and research activities in the academic areas of the College, as well as spaces that are necessary to support essential CLT functions.

Instructional Projects

Current Instructional Projects »

Sample Operational Projects

Facility use policies »

Equipment loan policies »

National Foreign Language Resource Center

The Hawaii NFLRC is the only center remainining since the inception of the Title VI LRC Program in 1990. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the mission of the LRC program is to increase the national capacity for teaching and learning foreign languages. In its 25 years of operation, the NFLRC has produced an exemplary record of resources and activities that have gained its national recognition in the profession.

The LRC program focuses on four main areas: professional development, research, materials development, and dissemination. Below are some of the projects I oversee in my capacity as NFLRC director since 2014.

Professional Development

The main professional development projects I oversee in this cycle focus on project-based language learning and on online language pedagogy. The project-based language learning project is a broad initiave that includes different types of components aiming at helping language instructors in the conceptualization, design, and development of projects in language learning contexts. The online language pedagogy project consists of a series of professional development opportunities that exclusively target the needs of online foreign language instructors.

Project-based Language Learning » Online Language Pedagogy »

Research

The NFLRC actively participates in the production and dissemination of research. In my capacity as NFLRC director, I act a series editor of its monograph series. Several ongoing NFLRC projects additionally include design-based research components.

Materials Development

Several NFRLC projects result in the creation of materials for professional development. For example, the OLP modules result in materials that are made available as an open educational resource to the profession. Similarly, NFLRC Intensive Summer Institutes (ISI) also produce resource websites with curated resources around particular topics of interest, such as project-based language learning, such as the ISI 2015 or ISI 2016 sites.

Materials whose primary purpose is language learning are also created through several NFLRC projects. For example, a Vietnamese resource website with materials curated or created for language learners was developed as part of a curriculum development project.

Dissemination

Dissemination activities include the dissemination of research through publications and professional conferences. For example, in 2015 the NFLRC had five presentations at ACTFL and and in 2016 four presentations at CALICO.

Flagship Technoloy Innovation Center

The Language Flagship is an initiative from the Department of Defense that combines 27 programs in 22 institutions of higher education. The primary goal of this initiative is to change the way languages are learned in the U.S. through an innovative approach grounded on years of successful experience. Within this initiative, the role of the Technology Innovation Center is to leverage existing efforts and resources and facilitate projects that will improve the use of technology in language education. In order to identify efforts that may result in sustainable projects and improved outcomes, the Technology Innovation Center used a design-thinking approach. Stakeholders in the private and public sectors were invited to engage in discussions in an environment that fostered the emergence of new ideas and promising solutions. Experts from both the public and private sectors, including various areas of academia, businesses at different stages of growth, as well as various government agencies, through a series of symposia, were invited to contribute to this project by participating in one of three symposia:

Symposium I (November 5–6, 2015, Honolulu)

Symposium II (February 26–27, 2016, Pittsburgh)

Symposium III (March 17–18, 2016, San Francisco)

To inform the symposia, we designed and delivered a survey on the status of technology use across Flagship institutions and, through a collaboration with the New Media Consortium, we published a Horizon Brief on innovation in foreign language education.

Besides these strategic planning activities, which were the focus of the first year, the Technology Innovation Center also engaged in the creation of a simulation for learners of Chinese. Since one of the functions of the center is to operate as an incubator for experimental projects, the simulation was used to model how a project might leverage existing resources to create technology enhanced learning opportunities for Flagship students that can be expanded across multiple programs. The simulation project was based on my experience with a similar project created by Prof. David Russel at Iowa State University and consisted in the creation of a fictitious company, Green Ideas, Inc., and tasks that were implemented in three Chinese language classes.

Julio C Rodríguez