August 2023
LEADERSHIP UPDATES
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Larry Udry, Divine Word College, Epworth, Iowa, USA

Hello CALL-ISers!

I have to admit when I first started thinking of publishing a newsletter on ChatGPT and AI, I thought I wouldn't get any submissions. Boy, was I wrong? I have had a flood of submissions, and this is just the first of two newsletters devoted to this topic. The articles here are whether AI and ChatGPT, in a general sense, are tools that can be used to enhance pedagogy and improve learning in measurable ways.

As you can see from the screenshot below, most people think that these will be valuable tools.

( or at least not a foe).

I would especially like to thank the Newsletter Editing Team consisting of Bashar Al Hariri, Robin Miller, Nathan Toister, Suzanne Bardasz, our newest member Michael Winans, and one of our current chairs, Dr. Nellie Muller Deutsch.

Whether you think these tools are friends or foes, they still need to be evaluated objectively. To that end, Michael Winans shared the sources below that could be used as a starting point for evaluating all forms of technology.

References:

Hubbard, P. (2020) Evaluation of courseware/tutorial apps and online resources. In N. Arnold & L. Ducate (Eds.), Engaging language learners through CALL: From theory and research to informed practice (pp. 390–430). Equinox Publishing.

ICT4LT Project. (2011). CALL software and website evaluation forms. Information and communication technology for language teachers. http://www.ict4lt.org/en/evalform.doc

Rosell-Aguilar, F. (2017). State of the app: A taxonomy and framework for evaluating language learning mobile applications. CALICO Journal 34(2), 243–258.

If there is something that you would like to see in our newsletter, or if you’d like to join the newsletter team, please feel free to contact us.

Hoping to hear from you,

Larry


Larry Udry has worked at Divine Word College, a small Catholic seminary in Epworth, Iowa, since 2003. He has published the CALL- IS Newsletter and has served on the CALL IS Steering Committee since 2009. Recently, he revised the second edition that has an accompanying app of an environmentally-themed ESL e-text with Kendall Hunt. Prior to his position at Divine Word College, he worked in UT Martin for eleven years, where he published the TNTESOL Newsletter.