National Labsite for Adult ESOL
(2000-2006)
The Lab School (2001-2008) was a national state-of-the-art research center engaged in classroom-based research and professional development focusing on English as a Second Language. It was conceived of and developed by Steve Reder and Kathryn A. Harris. It was started through funding from the Institute for Education Sciences and then received support from the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation and designed to strengthen programs serving adult ESOL learners across the country through systematic research and experimentation within the context of an existing ESL program. From 2005-2008, the Lab School has recorded courses from Portland State's Intensive English Language Program and Russian Language Flagship Program.
The Lab School was modeled after the "lab schools" found in K-12 education, in which an elementary or secondary school operates in partnership with a nearby university engaged in teacher preparation and educational research. Such lab schools serve as settings where high quality education, teacher preparation, educational research and program innovation and development take place. It was a dedicated university site, close to public transportation, research faculty, and graduate students. From 2001-2005, the facility had two dedicated classrooms separated by an adjoining observation/technology room. Each classroom was equipped with four fixed cameras and two remotely controlled cameras. Classes that have used the facility were continuously recorded using the four fixed ceiling-mounted cameras and two remotely-controlled ceiling-mounted cameras. Sound is captured by radio microphones worn by each teacher and two students per class (on a rotating basis). Custom software allows researchers and practitioners to select and stream (across the web) examples of second language acquisition and classroom practices. The Lab School at Portland State University (PSU) established a setting where university-based researchers, teacher trainers and service providers cooperate to conduct applied research.
The goals of the Lab School were to conduct high-quality research on second language acquisition and classroom discourse and carry out systematic innovation through research-driven enhancements to existing practice. To collaborate with researchers at other institutions, nationally and internationally, to conduct investigations of the role of language in classroom learning, particularly, language learning. To strengthen professional development systems for adult ESOL teachers by connecting the Lab School closely to local preservice and inservice training and by disseminating research and professional development material.
The Lab School developed (2001-2005) as a partnership between PSU and Portland Community College (PCC). PCC is the largest provider of ESOL services in the Portland metropolitan area offering adult ESOL services in many locations. One of these was the dedicated location on the PSU campus.
From 2001-2005, 682 students participated in classes at the Lab School as regularly registered students in the ESL program at Portland Community College. The majority of these students were just beginning to learn English. That group of students represented more than 60 different countries and 39 different languages. They vary widely in their level of education. Some have had no formal education while others hold college degrees. They ranged in age from 17 to 77. All signed a consent form translated into their own language which informed them that the audio and video data collected at the Lab School would be used for research and professional development only.
A system of client-server software programs, called “ClassAction,” was developed at the Lab School to manage, code and transcribe, and provide web-accessible searching and playback of selected portions of the recorded media. Using these tools, project researchers (as well as a small group of researchers and teachers elsewhere) are able to select and view clips of ESOL classrooms for information about particular points of second language acquisition or pedagogy. Such clips can then be more closely analyzed for research purposes or for use in teacher training and other professional development materials.
The ClassAction system consists of four major tools for working with the corpus. The ClassAction Coder&Transcriber program is used by project staff to code and transcribe the recorded media into a large searchable database. Using the ClassAction Toolbox program, researchers and teacher trainers can view and mark raw media files into playlists that can be widely streamed, along with associated coding and transcription data, to remote users for research and professional development activities. With the ClassAction Query program, users can search the database for clips of media illustrating particular points of second language acquisition or pedagogy. Query returns a playlist of matching clips that can be viewed and refined using the Toolbox program. Playlists made by Query or Toolbox can be viewed with the ClassAction Viewer program which is freely downloadable as a web browser plug-in. Toolbox and Query were used internally at PSU for project research and in a number of MA thesis projects and was shared freely to sanctioned external users who signed a confidentiality agreement, etc. Viewer is freely downloadable.
The design features of ClassAction allowed it to maintain persistent links between transcribed/coded data and original audio-video recordings, support the use of multiple projects & coding frameworks with the same recordings, enable sophisticated indexing & searching of media-linked transcription & coding data, offer layered design so that varying levels of depth and detail can be attached to the media within a consistent framework, allow media to be selected and streamed across the web for remote viewing of clips together with corresponding transcript and activity code data, supports multiple cameras and microphones, is applicable to non-classroom originated materials (e.g., in-home student interviews, teacher interviews), and made it extensible to projects involving large archives of oral narratives (e.g., multimedia interviews with elder speakers of a Native American language; oral histories of African Americans who moved to Portland during WW II).
The system components of ClassAction can be broken down by the recording system, The ClassAction Toolbox, ClassAction Query, and ClassAction Viewer. The recording system supports up to six simultaneous cameras and 12 microphones, the lab School classrooms each recorded with 6 cameras: 4 fixed cameras in corners and 2 remotely controlled cameras for close-ups; 5 microphones: 2 ceiling mounted and 3 wireless worn by students and teacher. The recording system recorded in streamable Windows Media format. The ClassAction Toolbox is used for media review and annotation. It enabled rapid browsing through large complex video archives, supports switching among multiple cameras and microphones "on the fly", and permits clips of interest to be marked and annotated into topic playlists. ClassAction Query is a search tool that enables researchers to search a database of transcribed and coded data. searches can be based on speaker, speaker characteristics, time points, classroom codes, language items, etc. ClassAction Query is also able to returns a playlist of media clips and associated data for use in Toolbox or Viewer. ClassAction Viewer displays a playlist of media clips and associated data, playlists shown can be manually using ClassAction Toolbox or queried from the database of transcribed or coded data. Viewer is able to work across web connections and can be embedded into multimedia publications.
The multimedia corpus has been available to ESOL scholars and practitioners for research and professional development through an application process. Users are required to abide by Lab School confidentiality, image permission and data sharing policies. Access to the data comes through the use of ClassAction software which is distributed to approved users.