Week7's reading reflection

Week7’ reading reflection
Liou, H. C. (1994). Practical considerations for multimedia courseware development: An EFL IVD experience. CALICO Journal, 11(3), 47-74.
The big explosion of technological innovations leads to high development of CALL courseware, and many theories and practice about SLA, instructional design concepts can be relevant. But the question that how should the course develop, especially for the most popular one, multimedia, immediately become a hot issue and the considerations for many people. This paper discusses this issue through introducing and exploring the development of a piece of EFL interactive videodisc courseware. Detailed information like objective, instructional design, on-line implementation, and the whole process of analysis are explained in this article. This paper aims to suggest a direction for those who will develop or use CALL multimedia material in the future
The part that I want to put emphasize on is the conclusion part. Two important issues are presented as practical implications and recommendations for those who are interested in the development of multimedia courseware.
One is the design of the “template” for the project described in this paper ensure a further step for layman language teachers who may have little knowledge and experience about CALL, or rather technology skills, but would like to use videodiscs in language classes. The reality is that more and more teachers are interested in CALL programs and materials, but few satisfying or practicable products can be got access to.
My experience in the mainland is that many teachers are interested in CALL materials and programs and want to introduce them to assist their teaching, but most of the teachers experience little about CALL, and are lack of training about targeted technologies or skills. They have the concepts to apply CALL program in teaching and briefly have positive attitude toward the effectiveness of CALL materials, but can’t provide a well-command over the equipment and technology which are included in CALL programs. This seriously limits their application of CALL programs. Sometimes they have basic media equipments but can’t exert them to the maximum extent. The other situation is that maybe the CALL programs or materials are really well-designed and effective, but teaching environment failed to provide the required technology hardware. These two situations are the most common realities in Mainland English teaching environment.
The other issue is that courseware development involving multimedia tends to be labor intensive and time consuming.