Company Blog

Learnosity was the solutions partner for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment's MALL and FÓN projects in Ireland. These projects gave us some great information on the real and quantifiable benefits Learnosity Voice delivers for both students and teachers.

Katrina Keogh, Education Officer at the NCCA, speaks in depth to John Hurley from TeachNet about the FÓN project. Katrina shares some fascinating insights and findings from the project. It’s a must hear for anyone interested in language learning and assessment.

The pod cast is available from the NCCA Podcasts website or from iTunes.

Greetings from the United States! I recently attended and presented at CALICO 2010 in Amherst College, MASS. Despite my presentation starting at 8am on Saturday, a sizeable and good natured group turned up.

It was really interesting to hear from the group how community colleges, four year colleges and universities, both in the US and elsewhere, are responding to huge demand to develop English language proficiency. Naturally students have a requirement to interact with the academic content of their fields of study. The group were really interested in how Learnosity Voice could help address the needs of these students in higher education.

Some members of the group are teaching the next generation of K-12 English language instructors and a lively discussion ensued about how best prepare teachers to work with students on the Speaking and Listening components of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language, TESOL standards, and the Common Core standards in the US. We discussed how content teachers will be equipped to teach and assess in any of these areas when language instruction was not part of their pre-service experience and nor does it seem to be available in in-service.

I am confident that Learnosity can play a big part in delivering solutions to assist with these challenges. Have a look below at the presentation that I delivered.

Please contact me with any questions you may have (jesse.markow [at] learnosity.com), or leave a comment here.

Jesse Markow, Learnosity Education Consultant, USA.

Learnosity Presentation at CALICO 2010

The Irish Minister for Trade and Commerce Mr Billy Kelleher TD announced on Friday that Learnosity has signed a €100k contract with the Association of Independent Schools in Queensland Australia.

The Minister who led a week long trade mission to Australia, met staff and customers of Learnosity.

Mark Lynch, CTO and co-founder of Learnosity said, "We are delighted to be working on this innovative project with Independent Schools Queensland. This project will demonstrate how language learning can be accelerated through the appropriate use of iPod’s and Learnosity’s innovative solutions.”

Gerry Murphy (Enterprise Ireland), Minister Billy Kelleher, Gavin Cooney (Learnosity)

Learnosity partnered with The Open University on a project that looked at how mobile devices can be integrated into course study.

The research project explored and evaluated the contexts in which students find mobile devices most beneficial in learning. Furthermore, the project sought to inform future plans for integrating mobile speaking activities into the design of new courses.

A second, larger, project with the Open University is already underway.

Read more about our work with The Open University.

"Can mobile phones help in the teaching, learning and assessment of Irish?
'Yes they can!' according to the experiences of teachers and students"

The National Centre Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) February 2010 Newsletter features the FÓN Project

Learnosity was delighted to team up with the NCCA to deliver the FÓN project. The project focused solely teaching the Irish language using Learnosity Voice. The Irish language (Gaeilge) is widely taught in schools throughout Ireland.

The latest NCCA newsletter (info@NCCA February 2010) reports on the findings of the project, addresses the facts and figures in terms of impact, as well as some really interesting feedback and insights from the teachers and students involved.

The scale of the project was large; in total 16 teachers and 368 students from six post-primary schools took part.

Student Usage - The Facts:

• Students listened to and spoke Irish for a phenomenal 882 hours.
• 15,374 calls were made by students to the Learnosity Voice system.
• On average Learnosity recorded 42 calls per student or 2.5 hours of Irish talk time during the 11 week period per student.
• Phone calls were made by students as late as 11pm and 6 am to Learnosity Voice.
• The highest user of Learnosity Voice made 272 calls on the project, totalling 4 calls per day, including usage on the weekend.
• Students continued to use Learnosity Voice after the project had finished, all at their own cost.

Improving Language Skills

Teachers reported increased competence in language skills amongst the students. The scope of the improvement was broad and is reported to include improved speaking and listening, greater vocabulary, better ability to construct sentences and greater user of tenses in Irish.

Increased Motivation and Confidence

The NCCA newsletter reports the first hand teacher insights into the increased motivation and confidence witnessed amongst the students.

Students described the experience as "fun", "interesting", and "different" and "new" and also suggested that the project improved their pronunciation of the spoken language.

The students remained fully engaged for the duration of the class and often spoke Irish for the entirety of the 40 minute session.

Advantages for the Teacher

The teachers involved in the FÓN project shared their experiences in using Learnosity Voice. They reported getting a greater sense of how the student was progressing in terms of their Irish language skills.

They found it easier to note and address any recurring mistakes with each student and importantly each student in the class was heard, even the quiet ones.

Autonomous Learning

The newsletter reports on how students took control of their own learning. They took advantage of the flexibility of Learnosity Voice and how it enabled them to speak Irish where and when it was most convenient for them.

Students felt that they spoke more Irish using their mobile phones than they would have normally.

The self assessment aspect of Learnosity Voice was reported as a positive by the students as they could listen and re-record any of their answers and gauge their level of Irish against other students.

Both teachers and students recognised one of the greatest benefits of Learnosity Voice as being the enablement of Irish language learning outside of the school building and outside of school hours.

The team involved in the FÓN project were recognised with the European Award for Languages- the Language Label in 2009. The award recognised the projects ability to motivate and engage language learners as well as being meaningful and productive project.

Read the Article

Read this and other info@NCCA issues on the NCCA website, or download the article here (2 pages, pdf, 170kb).

For more on the project see the FÓN Project page on the NCCA website or the project blog.

In the latest release of Learnosity Voice (now on version 3.3.0), there are a large number of improvements based on feedback from teachers using it. A huge thanks to all the teachers those who have provided feedback.

Here are the key changes:

Renamed “Exams” to “Activities”

Exams was often confusing as it had the connotation of an end of term/year examination. To make it more user friendly we have renamed it to Activity. You may still use activities for revision or assessment purposes.

Assigning multiple activities

One of the consistent requests we have received was to provide more control to teachers to assign work to students. By adding some changes to the dial in menu and in the teachers area this is now possible. To assign activities to a class simply:

• Select Students and Classes
• Select the class you want to work with
• Select the Activities tab
• Drag activities from the left hand side into a slot on the right hand side.
• Press “Update” to save your selections.

These will now be available to students when they dial in.

Changes to dial plan

When a student dials in, they are now presented with and option to select an assigned activity from 1 to 9. Students can see the list of activities assigned to them from their student site home page.

Student home page shows assigned activities

When a student logs in they will see the list of activities that they have been assigned by their teacher. Assigned activities may be for revision or for assessment depending on how the teacher wishes to use it.

Ability to remove sessions

Teachers now have the ability to remove sessions. They may want to remove them because they are incomplete or because the student did multiple attempts and they only want to keep the best one. At the bottom of the session marking page there is now a “Delete Session” button.

Lots of other fixes and improvements

There are numerous other little fixes and improvements.

We hope you enjoy the improvements and please keep letting us know how we can make it better.

The Team at Learnosity

As part of the 2009 European Year of Creativity and Innovation, the Higher Education Authority and Léargas have published a booklet. The European Language Label winning FÓN Project is featured.

The relevant part of the publication is below, and the whole booklet can be downloaded from the Léargas website (pdf, 5.6mb, 32 pages).

Léargas article on FÓN Project

Katrina Keogh and Judith Ní Mhurchú from the NCCA have written an article for the CIDREE yearbook about the mobile language learning projects using Learnosity technology.

The article outlines the background of the projects, along with the change in Irish language policies which changed the marks awarded for the oral component of the examination. It also outlines the excellent results of the two projects: MALL Project (2007) and FÓN Project (2008-2009).

The article is entitled: "Changing policy and an innovative response: Teaching, learning and assessing Irish using mobile phones".

CIDREE is the Consortium of Institutions for Development and Research in Education in Europe. The title of the yearbook is "Yearbook #9: MANY VOICES. Language Policy and Practice in Europe, Emerging challenges and innovative responses".

The yearbook can be downloaded in full from the CIDREE website. Alternatively, just download the relevant part of the yearbook (PDF, 456kb, 14 pages).

Continuing on our winning streak, I was honoured last week to be awarded a LearnTrends Innovation Award during the LearnTrends online conference. Learnosity won for our pioneering work with spoken language learning using mobile phones.

I really liked the fact that this was an award focused on innovation. The prize was to make a presentation at the LearnTrends event last week.

For more on the awards, see Tony Karrer's eLearning Tech blog and Jay Cross's announcement of the awards on the LearnTrends website.

I look forward to meeting Jay and buying him a pint next week in Berlin at Online Educa, and to participating in LearnTrends 2010!

On Friday 12th November, I was thrilled to pick up a coveted Gold award at the e-Learning Age awards held in the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London.

The awards, run by e-Learning Age Magazine, are seen as one of the most prestigious awards in the learning industry. They showcase the very best examples of work in the field, with winners representing everything from blue-chip multinationals to specialist start-up companies. There was almost 200 entries from 15 different countries, and so we were delighted to be shortlisted in two categories: Best Use of Mobile Learning and Most Innovative New Product or Tool in E-learning.

With so many entries, this is the most competitive year in the history of the awards. With standards so high, some categories have bronze, silver and gold awards for the first time. Learnosity was delighted to win a Gold award for Learnosity Voice in the Most Innovative New Product or Tool in E-learning category. Read more about it in the cover story of this month's edition of E-Learning Age Magazine.

Judges Comments