VOICEBOARD

What is it?
Voiceboard (VB) is ANVILL's most popular toolit adds spoken language to discussions, audio journals,
pronunciation exercises, and other forms of oral language practice.
Like text-based forums, VB allows teachers or students to easily post or respond to an oral/aural assignment.
VB encourages multimedia communication; messages can be text, audio or video-based.
Voiceboard has two modes: one for teachers which allow Ts to create VBs, add "topics" to existing VBs, and
edit messages that have been posted. The other is for students (pictured at right). Students can create and
post their messages, and, of course, read and respond to those of others.
Voiceboard is easy to set up and administerin fact, you can create and publish a voiceboard in about 2
minutes. Students will see the VB as soon as they log in to your ANVILL course; they can begin adding their
comments right away.
How Does VB Work?
This short video tutorial discusses some of the ways teachers use ANVILL, both as a whole-class complement
to discussions or other speech work, and as a more private kind of portfolio where students can keep a term's
worth of spoken language recordings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4BckINshCg
Getting Started with Voiceboards
1) Log into ANVILL and select your course from the Courses menu.
2) From your course home page, you can always see all the Voiceboards for your class. Sometimes your
teacher may put a copy of it in the lesson menu as well. This lesson, for example is called "1.11 Our Class
Voiceboards".

new2.jpg
Picking a Topic
3) Messages are listed in a drop down menu. You can change topics by clicking on the down arrow. For
example, this topic is called "Pavlovian Observations". Only your teacher can create new topics.

Reading or Viewing a Message

4) Messages are listed on the left side of the Voiceboard. Click a message to view and/or hear it.

Adding Your Own Message

5) To add a new message, click Add a Message (top right). A dialog box will pop up asking you if you would
like to allow uoregon.edu to access your camera and microphone. Click Allow. If you dont want to see this
message again next time you log on, check the Remember box.

Recording
Recording Your Message
6) Enter a title and a comment about the contents of your message (the text can be brief, but is required.)
Choosing a recording mode: text, audio, or audio and video. Recording tools appear after you choose one
of these options.
Recording and Posting Your Message
7) Click Record to begin speaking. Click Stop when you're finished. Listen to it--Play.
8) If you like your message, click the Add It! button to submit it. If you don't like it, click Forget It! to start
all over.
(Your message will not be saved unless you click the Add It! button.)
Hardware Set-up

Use the Camera/Mic Settings to select your recording hardware. If you do not see the microphone level
meter (green bars) moving when you speak, your voice is not recording. Go back and adjust the
microphone settings again.
Note: Check your machines system settings (sound input/output), too, if these options do not work.

Posted Messages
9) Once posted, only your instructor can delete or revise messages.
How do I use Voiceboard?

Voiceboard is aimed at extending or

jumpstarting class discussions. As such it can be used in many different ways, from a language practice tool
to a student journal to a broadcast medium, much like a podcast. If you have a microphone or a webcam, you
can be online and contributing/responding very quickly. Here are some ways faculty at UO are using it:
Some use its podcast-lite capability for short talks or reviews, such as summarizing a class
discussion or previewing a chapter in an upcoming reading or lecture
Others have Ss rehearse oral presentations, practice pronunciation or give short reports
Language teachers like its "portfolio" capabilitiesthey have an archive of a student's work for a whole
term/yearand their feedback can be spoken as well
All teachers say that VB lets voices and opinions that dont get heard from the back of the classroom
come to the forefront
LIVE CHAT
What is it?
Livechat is ANVILL's conferencing and tutoring tool. It works similarly to other web-based chat software with
the important exception that it is advertising free and designed for audio and video chats as well as text.
Access is restrictedonly registered course participants can access the chat function.
Once an instructor creates chat rooms for his/her class, students can use them for text, audio, and/or video
chats. Up to four people can chat at once (network bandwidth is a consideration for video).
Note: A course has no rooms at the outset--the instructor has to add them. To do so click on Manage Course >
Manage Livechat and then proceed to add as many as you like--there's no limit.
Our initial release of Livechat targets language learners, especially those participating in tutoring programs,
like YLCs free Language Exchange. Or teachers who've been able to successfully link their classes together -ANVILL can provide a safe platform for students to participate in class-to-class exchanges.
Livechat is designed with audio and video in mind. All a user needs is a microphone and/or webcam. Livechat
allows chat participants to easily turn on and off their speech or video inputs. And because it uses Flash,
nearly all web browsers are already configured to work. No other software needs to be installedit just works
(or at least it should).
Chat Instructions-Teachers
ANVILL's chat tools are course-specific, so rooms that you set up in the LiveChat Manager for one class (e.g.
SPAN II) aren't available to students in another.
1. To create a chat room, click on the Manage Course tab, then the Manage LiveChat tab.

LiveChat Teacher View

2. Type a name for the chat room in the Room Name (blue) box, and click Create (the name of the room
appears in the box on the left.)
3. To create more rooms, repeat step 2 (there's no limit to the number of rooms per course).
4. If you want to delete a room, highlight it (in box on the left) and click Delete.
5. As a teacher, you can join a conversation from here by highlighting a room and clicking Join. There's a
maximum of 4 speakers per chat room.
6. Once rooms are created, you can "manage" them from the list in the Manage Livechat area.
7. Suggestions:
1. Expect to spend some time helping students correctly configure their microphones and
webcams.
2. Livechat relies on a correctly configured Flash player plug-in.
Chat InstructionsStudents
Livechat
1. From the main menu of your couse--click on the Livechat tab to open the chat room; there may be
many rooms listed (if someone is in one, the star will be yellow).
2. From the Course Lesson menu (if your teacher has linked to it from there
3. From a URL (but you'll still have to log into ANVILL and pick your course first)

Log-in
To use Livechat
1. Click on the name of the chat room and Join. This takes you to a second window.

2. Check your A/V settings: Cam Settings (requires web cam) and Mic Settings. Can you see yourself?
can you see the volume level increase or decrease?
3. Click on the buttons at the bottom to activate your camera and microphone.
4. Start talking (or typing).
To go to another room or quit Livechat

LiveChat in Action (Lyon, France <--> Eugene, OR

1. Click on the "x" in the upper right corner. Doing so exits you from this chat session. You can now join
another room or do another activity in ANVILL.
Suggested LiveChat Uses
Virtual office hours Some students, maybe the same ones who don't speak much in class,
never come to office hours for the kind of consulting/tutoring that they need to do well on a
research paper or in preparing for exams. Faculty or GTFs who find it hard to fit in office hours
when they're truly available may enjoy the scheduling freedom that Amiga makes possible. Its
particularly good for short, focused sessions where both parties are bringing a fairly high level
of preparation to the meeting: e.g., clarifying goals, explaining a lecture, encouraging.
Collegial conferencing Working with a colleague on a grant deadline and she happens to
be home with a sick child and the phone just won't suffice? Need a brief appearance by an
expert in Seattle to provide another perspective to a class discussion? Want to check in
regularly with fellow collaborators, e.g., teachers in the field just after they've tried out some
new technique? Because it provides more than one channel (voice and text), personal
communication can benefit.
Peer Chats Here, Amiga functions as essentially an online version of peer advising or
tutoring. This is the model we employ with our Foreign Language Exchange, e.g., you help me
with Portuguese and I'll help you with French. Obviously, the partners need something to talk
about, and initially the more structured this is the better (at least in language learning)weve
got 15 minutes and this is what were going to accomplish. Chats like these are good early in
the term when you want students to get to know one another better; later in the term students
can set their own parameters and goals.
Group work Like other collaboration tools this one makes it possible for groups (albeit pairs)
to meet online and plan and discuss class work. This is especially valuable once a project is
underway and group members' roles are well established. An instructor can create as many
chat rooms as necessary. Information gap tasks seem to work particularly well.
Quizzes & Surveys-Overview
Assessing students' spoken (and written) language skills

Quizzes and Surveys (Q&S) is ANVILLs tool for

creating and grading on-line quizzes and surveys. As with ANVILL's other tools, it is optimized for speech, so
teachers can create media-rich tasks and students can respond in a variety of ways, including via a spoken
language response.
When it is used in combination with the Voiceboard and/or Forum, Q&S can provide teachers with several
ways of collecting and assessing spoken language performance.
Input can come from an external source (like in the example at right) or teachers can simply record
themselves and let students respond in kind, much like in an interview.
Items can be simple and straightforward, What did you do last weekend? to detailed and involved: Watch
the following video, listen to the questions that accompany it, and respond to them as if you were addressing
an audience of fellow teachers.
These instructions introduce the major components of Q&S, demonstrating how to quickly create a survey or
quiz.
Getting Started: Creating a new Survey or Quiz in ANVILL

1.

Choose "Add a Quiz" from the Manage

Course menu (the pencil icon).
2. Give your quiz a title and a short description and click save.
3. This takes you back to the lesson menu, where you need to click on "Manage Quiz" to begin adding
items or edit existing ones. The first question is already there waiting to be edited.

Quiz Creation
Settings: Custom Introduction/instructions | Edit |
1. Click on | Edit |
2. You can customize introductory and end pages using the Change button.
3. Intro Page Message This is where you setup the quiz/survey, telling the Ss what theyre going to
do.
4. End Message This is where you indicate that the test has ended. Here you can link to another
activity and/or give further instructions.
5. Show progress indicator This is where you allow the Ss to see how many items theyve completed
(recommended).
6. Allow students to go back This lets you restrict navigation within the quiz (discouraged in surveys).
7. When finished with Settings, press save. If you are editing previously created settings, you can choose
Save to save the new settings, and Cancel to restore settings..

Item Creation
1. Question Number (1). Here you assign a number to the item (you dont have to be sequential).
2.
3. Heading (2). You can use this to tell the Ss something about the item (e.g., special instructions for
answering, or include a hint). Note: The heading or category can be hidden from the survey/quiz Ss.

Heading
4. Question Text (3). Use the text (WYSIWYG) editor to write your question (or paste from MS Word). Note
that different text sizes and fonts can be used. Also, multimedia can be part of the question (see
below) there are buttons for images and YouTube; hyperlinks are possible, too).

Text Editing
5. Audio and Video files to include in the Question (4). Heres where you can speak the question or
include an audio or video file for students to listen to or watch. You can either link to an existing file, or
create a new one using the recording features for either audio or video, if a microphone or camera is
connected.

Audio and Video

6. If you add files, click the Save button (or cancel to eliminate all changes). In addition, clicking the
Autoplay button will permit uploaded files (sound and video) to begin playing as soon as the item
appears. For directly recorded audio and video (record audio, record video), the student has to click
the play button.
Item Types
1. Answer (5). Question type. After changing the question type, press the Save button to bring up the
appropriate options for that question type. Multiple choice is the default. The question fields will
depend on the type of question chosen. For multiple choice, you can indicate the correct answer.
Scaled questions will have no options, while Short and Long Answer questions will have room for the
correct text (for graders). The last choice, Spoken Answer, is what you want to use to have Ss respond
orallythey'll need a microphone to record themselves.
2.
3. Allow students/survey takers to add comments? (6) An option allowing Ss to leave comments is
available at the bottom of the pagevery useful for surveys.

Comments?
4. Finally, choose to Save Changes & View the question, to Delete it, or Cancel to eliminate changes
made to the question.
5. The screenshot below shows the output from the information in the screenshots above and on the
previous page.

Quiz Results
Besides the basic set up choices in Q &S (introductory/concluding remarks, skipping ?s, etc.) ANVILL gives you
two more important options: the chance to make your quizzes available to those not in your course (very
useful for Surveys) and, of course, it lets you see the results of those who have taken your Q or S.
On the upper right hand side of the screen you will see the Options Menu and these links
URL for unregistered quiz takers. This allows you to send potential respondents a web address so
they can take the quiz without being registered in an ANVILL course.
View Responses. Here's where you see your students' quiz or survey results. For objective items (T/F,
Multiple Choice, etc.) the computer will evaluate the answers. For the open-ended items, including
"spoken answers", you have to assess each item. There' The results can be saved as a file (including
Excel) for use in an online gradebook. These results include a list of all who have taken the survey/quiz
and the time they needed to do so.
Quiz Editing
Most quizzes and surveys need to be edited. The Add Question | Renumber Questions are two useful tools
for doing so.

1. Click (+) Add Questions from the Settings (first screenshot above) to begin creating your quiz or
survey. Here is where you add items, including any associated media.

2. The screenshot above for item #3 creates the quiz output below.

The Administration ScreenPublishing, Managing, Deleting

Weve already seen this Administration screen (below). Notice it has several other options, including:
1. Publish/Unpublish post. This allows you to construct a quiz or survey, and make it available to students
when you wish.
2. Manage. This link takes you back to the questions (see screenshot above) so that you can edit your
quiz.
3. Delete. You may decide that you no longer want the quiz.