Interactive web-based review units for phonetics and phonology

We are creating a new set of web-based interactive learning units in phonetics and phonology. These serve two purposes: supplementing student learning in the English Linguistics Basismodul, and providing review material for intermediate/advanced-level courses. With the proposed units, instructors have a resource for flipped classroom teaching or self-paced learning by assigning them to students to complete outside of limited contact hours. Students are able to review their most needed topics, and spend as much time as necessary. With less class-time spent on review, courses can more efficiently focus on new material. Each unit has a short quiz with autograded questions and feedback that provides dynamic links to relevant sections of the unit.

In addition to supplementing the Basismodul, the units will provide important review material for intermediate/advanced-level courses. At present, these courses are required to spend a substantial portion at the beginning of the course reviewing foundational material. With the new review units, instructors will be able to refer students to these units for review, and/or incorporate them into flipped-classroom teaching.

Units will be self-contained to allow instructors better choice of units to assign. For example, a Mor-phology course may require units on the sound structure of words, while a Sociophonetics course might require more extensive review of the physical properties of speech. Each unit will begin with an initial assessment quiz, recommend the unit of needed, and conclude with a final quiz. Both assessments will draw from a larger pool of questions, allowing the student to retake them. The main part of each unit will consist of short texts with interactive multimedia elements implement-ed using the H5P plugin, an HTML5-based tool for creating interactive content. For example, students will interact with an acoustic waveform and spectrogram by changing certain parameters (amplitude, wavelength, etc.) and observing effects.