Dr. Jun DA

jda@mtsu.edu

Dr. Deborah Mistron

Foreign Languages

N/A

BDA 303

Upgrade of Existing Technology

N/A

The language lab of the Media Center for Language Acquisition serves over 3,300 students (Fall and Spring 2000 enrollment) per year fulfilling their foreign language requirement of their BA degree. This proposal requests funding so that we can convert it into a digital language lab with student workstations, network servers and switched network. The proposed purchase is specifically designed to address two major problems in our language lab: (1) There are only 6 TV+VCR units and 12 outdated PCs still running Windows95 on 100MHz or 166Mhz CPUs with only 32MB of RAM, which have been inadequate to meet the needs of those students for both their foreign language and general-purpose study. In particular, we do not have the capability of duplicating and distributing digitized multimedia learning materials to students; (2) With no server-client architecture in place, language placement tests for over 500 students (Fall 2000 statistics) have been conducted using 10-year old software running on unsecured standalone workstations, which are unreliable and have little protection for student privacy. The proposed equipment will enable us (1) to serve students with digitized audio/visual learning materials through both web-based multimedia streaming and network file sharing; and (2) to administer language placement tests securely and with protection for students’ privacy. We expect that over 3,300 students per year will have direct access to the workstations and services provided by the servers.