Emerita Professor Dorothy Chun, along with Department of Education doctoral students Honeiah Karimi and David Sañosa, gave one of the keynote talks at the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) conference on June 2nd. The presentation was titled “Traveling by Headset: Immersive VR for Language Learning.”
Immersive Virtual Reality with headsets such as the Oculus Quest or the HTC Vive, primarily used for video games, are being used for educational purposes in general and for second language learning in particular. The main affordances of this technology include providing learners with immersion in an authentic cultural context almost anywhere on the globe, enabling learning through embodied cognition, and increasing motivation through apps designed for gameful learning. In this presentation, Chun and team started with an immersive learning model that can be applied to L2 learning, presented some examples of VR apps that showcase the affordances of the technology (e.g., Wander), and ended with some recommendations for the development of future immersive VR apps for language learning. The talk built on some of the ideas and experiences gained from a VR project led by Diana Arya, Richert Wang, and Dorothy Chun for literacy development in children.
CALICO is a professional organization that serves a membership involved in both education and technology. CALICO has an emphasis on language teaching and learning but reaches out to all areas that employ the languages of the world to instruct and to learn. CALICO is a recognized international clearinghouse and leader in computer assisted learning and instruction. It is a premier global association dedicated to computer-assisted language learning (CALL).
Dorothy Chun was a Professor in the Department of Education from 2009-2020. Her passion has been researching and exploring how second languages are learned and how technology can be leveraged to enhance the learning of language and culture. Her research areas include: L2 phonology and intonation, L2 reading and vocabulary acquisition, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and telecollaboration for intercultural learning. She has conducted studies on cognitive process in learning with multimedia and has authored courseware for language and culture acquisition. Since 2000, she has been the Editor in Chief of the online journal Language Learning and Technology and in 2004 became the founding director of the Ph.D. Emphasis in Applied Linguistics at UCSB.
Honeiah Karimi is a doctoral student pursuing an emphasis in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences. She is under the advisement of Dr. Diana Arya and Dr. Andrew Maul. David Sañosa is a doctoral student emphasizing in Learning, Culture, and Technology under the advisory of Dr. Richard Durán and is broadly interested in the research and development of technology-based learning environments and strategies.