University of Leicester

Duckling Project

This is a case study of incorporating Wimba Voice Board into a MA distance learning programme in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) provided by the School of Education, the University of Leicester, UK. Six students studying the Language Discourse and Society took part in this pilot. The intention was to generate interaction between students and get them to discuss subject-specific concepts and issues, in the context of the formative assessment tasks. These tasks had previously been carried out by students individually, in the form of text-based portfolios. Evidence showed added benefits and advantages of voice- over text-based communication and the potential of the voice board for formative assessment within a distance learning programme.