Practice Sessions
Prior to the practice sessions and treatment, an orientation session was held with the students at which time logistic details were handled and computer laboratory schedules were set up. At that time, prompted by a question on the subject, a general overview of the principles of learning styles was revisited.
For practice purposes, it had been planned to annotate another excerpt
from ìAmélie et le mystère de l'homme Xî. However, the creation
of the single, glossed multimedia text for the treatment required an unforeseen,
exorbitant amount of time, an important consideration in the purchase of
authoring software for time-strapped teachers. Moving between the
Macintosh and PC environments also caused some minor hardware and software
problems.
As a result, under the advisement of Mary-Ann Lyman-Hager (1999), to facilitate both the studentsí understanding of and the comfort level with the various GALT controls, an already annotated document, Le corbeau et le renard, was selected, modified and incorporated into this study for the practice sessions. (see Appendix 5) This glossed text, available on the CD-ROM ìÀ líaventureî through John Wiley and Sons, was also a Lyman-Hager GALT creation. (Lyman-Hager, 1997a)
Footnote Controls Panel modifications replicated the media categories
that were created in the treatment text. These included a definition, pronunciation,
video and graphic category. Audio and System Controls remained the same.
(see Appendix 6)
Though one of the footnote options in the practice phase was a video
option, time constraints prohibited the creation of a video for glossing
purposes. However, to ensure that the video function which would be employed
in the treatment phase was understood, each student was shown a sample
video during all practice sessions. They were also instructed that the
video option on the control panel would be available for specific words
or expressions during the treatment.
During the practice sessions and treatment, students were informed that certain glosses may or may not be more helpful to learning. Therefore, they were encouraged to experiment with all the different glosses. No effort was made to instruct or coach the students on which gloss might or might not be more effective. The rationale for this was to avoid preconceived notions and to let them feel free to explore media likes and dislikes.
Only five computers could be set up with the GALT and QuickTime programs. Since this limited the number of students who could work with the software, from two to five students at a time practised in the lab. Each student was issued a headphone set for personal hygiene purposes and to individuate the auditory component. After the participants had at least three one-half hour practice sessions and one full hour session, during which time they read the text and looked up glosses, it was deemed by this author that an acceptable comfort level had been reached by all.