Faculty Grants

In an era where Artificial Intelligence continuously reshapes educational landscapes, innovative teaching methods are essential for engaging students and meeting pedagogical goals. I am excited to propose a groundbreaking initiative that blends artificial intelligence with language learning: a custom-designed chatbot for all levels and all foreign language instruction, that I have already implemented in my French III class and that I called the BaguetteBot. This chatbot, tailored exactly to meet students’ needs and aligned with pedagogical objectives of this level and to the syllabus and material of this class, adjusted to USC’s values and policies, it represents a significant leap forward in language acquisition and teaching efficacy. It can serve as a real teaching assistant for the professors and an effective tutor for students.

I would like to explore the possibility of using “Puppet pal” in language-teaching. Every semester, professors create scenarios and portfolio activities for students to use the target language outside of the classroom. This particular program interests me because students combine their creativity with simple technology to design a digital character (puppet) that comes to life in the stories they create. This makes language learning more enjoyable and gives students the opportunity to create with the target language and express themselves more freely. From what I have been able to see so far, this program facilitates role play (ideal in our classrooms), storytelling (narrating in present and past), vocabulary building, dialog creation, cultural exploration and more.

Learning a foreign language involves more than just the ability to communicate; successful communication relies on a solid understanding of the grammatical system. One key reason for struggle in language learning is the lack of a conceptual framework that fosters a clear understanding of grammar. The expected outcome of my project is a series of short educational videos that explain universal grammatical concepts to students of Russian language, featuring examples to illustrate these ideas. The project will consist of several phases: identifying grammatical concepts that are particularly challenging for students, gathering examples to illustrate these concepts, creating simplified explanations and scripts for the videos, designing the core format for the videos, and producing them. The choice of a short video format is driven by reduced attention span, not uncommon for nowday’s students. The videos will incorporate visual elements (simple, minimalist visuals illustrating concepts in real-life situations), auditory components (simultaneous narration), and textual information (subtitles and examples) to accommodate different types of learners.The videos will be hosted on a dedicated website or YouTube channel.

Fall 2022
Implementing PBL in advanced Chinese course where students select and present authentic materials autonomously, alongside textbook curriculum, constituting 24% of semester grade. Addition of Think-Tac-Toe gamification element in Spring 2023, where students select tasks from a table with input/output types and cultural topics, diversifying task types and meeting individual interests.

Watch the presentation of the project:

The use of wizer.me was explored to design and share interactive worksheets with Spanish language students in the third and fourth semesters. The app incorporated a variety of text and media in visually stimulating ways, including written and recorded instructions, student recordings, labeled images, and drawings. The tool targeted the acquisition of vocabulary related to health, wellbeing, illness, sports, environment, culture, and politics, with students producing audio, written, and visual texts to appeal to different learning preferences.

Watch the presentation of the project

Gameful design was implemented in the past to address learner variability issues in Advanced Chinese language classrooms. This curriculum allowed students to personalize their learning experience by selecting tasks aligned with their goals and accumulate points. Instead of traditional grading, students leveled up their grades with a gameful design throughout the semester, promoting intrinsic motivation and a sense of achievement. With this approach, students had more opportunities to take charge of their learning and engage in deeper learning.

Watch the presentation of the project

This project implemented Miro, an online whiteboard, to create interactive online learning activities in a hybrid class. As virtual teaching became more prominent due to current circumstances, Miro was used to transform in-person activities into online ones. The project proposed creating, assigning, and assessing activities that integrate the four basic language skills through Miro and incorporating it into existing learning platforms like Blackboard.

In this project, songs were used to improve verbal and written output among students. A song was chosen for every chapter of the course to reinforce vocabulary and grammar from the textbook. The project focused on reading comprehension of lyrics and analyzing cultural meanings in the song. Students were asked to create their own stanzas and to use free online software such as GarageBand to create a song related to a Latin American or Spanish cultural, political, or social topic. This project encouraged creative writing and verbalization in an innovative way.

During the Spring 2022 semester, a working group was led by Professor Mesrobian to discuss ungrading as a more effective approach to student learning than traditional grading methods. The group met monthly to explore different ungrading models and practices, as well as modify an existing course syllabus or create a new one to incorporate ungrading elements. Ungrading was also implemented in the professor’s Spanish 260 course, where students were encouraged to find internal motivation to learn through self-reflection and assessment, and meaningful feedback from the professor. The effectiveness of this approach was evaluated through student self-reflections and surveys.