The University of Alberta's phonetics course, LING 205, is one of the academic building blocks for a bachelor of arts degree in linguistics, and a key prerequisite for a master of science degree in speech-language pathology.
Unfortunately, students who don't live near one of the handful of Canadian universities that offer that course have often had to put their aspirations of helping those who struggle with actual phonetics on hold.
That is about to change, thanks to the U of A's Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, which has provided nearly $53,000 to the Departments of Linguistics and Speech Pathology & Audiology to develop interactive online lab activities and an online course for LING 205.
"One of the goals of the department is to put the course online in a format that allows the students to get the material that we think is necessary and prepare them so they can go into a degree for speech pathology without moving to Edmonton to take the class," said
Benjamin Tucker, professor in the Department of Linguistics, who says the university's speech pathology and audiology program has received dozens of requests for this class online. "The creation of this online phonetics course will be a first in Canada."
Tucker says the laboratory activities will create an opportunity for students to learn in a hands-on manner.
"My conception of the course is it is best learned as a lab class," he said. "You spend a lot of time doing hands-on activities, but that becomes tough with it being such a popular class."
Tucker says development of online lab activities will not only be part and parcel of the course's online version, but will also go a long way in meeting the hands-on need for the regular course activity.
Tucker envisions a number of labs, including one that helps teach anatomy by asking students to create vocal tracks using household items, as well as an improved version of a lab that sees students record and measure their own vowel sounds.
"There are certain characteristics in the acoustics that are unique to each vowel sound; that's why you hear different vowels," said Tucker. "This lab activity has the students going in and measuring their vowel sounds online. They can submit all their measurements on a form, and I can use that in class to show them this is what the class's vowels look like."
In the end, Tucker says, the in-person students will have better access to the types of learning activities that really drive the textbooks, and people in remote locations will have unprecedented access to this important course.
"The TLEF gives instructors an opportunity to merge problems that they have in terms of trying to convey information to students that is engaging and interesting, with research questions," said Tucker. "In a sense, you are taking these people who have been trained as researchers but who are also instructors, and allowing them to do research on how they instruct. As a result, you hopefully improve the teaching across campus."
Originally published if Folio.