"call (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) Materials Development" in: The tesol encyclopedia of English Language Teaching Online

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CALL (Computer-Assisted Language 
Learning) Materials Development
ELIZABETH HANSON-SMITH
 Framing the Issue
The last few years have seen a rapidly burgeoning movement to flipped (also 
known as “blended”) classes that deliver video lectures and other online materials 
before class, thereby enriching and deepening classroom discussion; and to wholly 
online learning where the professor assembles a course framework with instruc-
tional videos and related readings, tests, and activities. Online, students may 
engage in forums, quizzes, and peer-to-peer assessments with little or no 
intervention by the instructor. It is only a matter of enough server space for such 
courses to become “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs. Education can thus 
be distributed globally and at the students’ convenience.
In turn, the flipped and MOOC phenomena have encouraged the use of many 
new applications allowing online, desktop, and mobile development of materials 
for computer-assisted language learning, or CALL. (“CALL,” refers here to any 
electronic device and digital media, not just to a “computer.”) Given the ease of 
and wider access to digital tools, language teachers are increasingly developing 
their own online teaching and learning materials, tailored to their students’ and 
classes’ particular needs, and encouraging students to create their own. The activ-
ity of creating projects and other materials, rather than simply studying and taking 
tests, is of very high value in practicing languages and solidifying mastery.
This overview will include a brief examination of the pedagogical theories sup-
porting teacher and student materials development and suggest ways to use Web 
sites and software in communicative and creative approaches to language study.
 Making the Case
A growing body of pedagogical theory has developed around the concept of active 
or mindful learning. The Common Core (CC), US national curricular standards, 
The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching.
Edited by John I. Liontas (Project Editor: Margo DelliCarpini; Volume Editor: Greg Kessler).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0401
Hanson-Smith, E. (2018). CALL (computer-assisted language learning) materials 
development. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching 
(pp. 1–7). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0401

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CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) Materials Development
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emphasizes learning beyond rote recitation: reflection on what is learned, critical 
thinking, evaluation of one’s own learning processes, and explicitly deploying 
good learning habits. (For a useful handbook on developing curriculum for special 
needs students using the CC, see Courtade & Browder, 2011). The upper levels of 
Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning domains are another way of expressing 
these higher-level thinking skills (Bloom, 1956 [1984]; see UNC Charlotte, 2014, for 
a curricular tool). (Despite numerous critiques of Bloom’s taxonomy (see, e.g., 
Cole, 2016), the description of the various domains still seems a useful tool in cur-
ricular planning. For an updated version of Bloom, see Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001.)
Many teachers feel intuitively that courses promoting active, conscious, mindful 
learning, and interactivity among students—rather than just student to teacher 
and vice versa—are preferred environments. Several recent articles and studies 
have quantified this intuition. Freeman et al. (2014) in a meta-analysis of 225 
studies of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students, show that 
the number of students who pass a class correlates positively to the amount of 
active learning, as opposed to simply listening passively to lectures. The authors 
further show statistically that underrepresented student populations, for example, 
disabled students and women in science, do better with active learning. “The 
results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control 
in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically 
validated teaching practice in regular classrooms” (Freeman et al., 2014, Abstract). 
The results would no doubt be similar for language learners.
Lin’s (2014) meta-analysis, encompassing 59 studies published between 2000 
and 2012, analyzed the type of task that produced good learning for language 
students. It had been assumed that activities like information gap and jigsaw were 
appropriate for SLA, since they involved learner control of the information and 
student–student exchanges. However, Lin’s data indicate differently: “Students’ 
learning outcome was found to be significantly better when engaging in opinion 
exchange than in information-gap activities. Furthermore, tasks such as jigsaw 
and information gap could actually produce negative effects on language learn-
ing” (Lin, 2014, p. 14). Thus, we may assume that the type of task, even where it 
gives students authority and control, may significantly change the possibility of 
SLA. Tasks or projects must involve creativity or critical thinking and demand 
higher-level cognitive engagement.
Kim, Rueckert, Kim, and Seo (2013) studied the expectations of a group of 53 
teachers in training while using mobile devices, for example, smart phones and 
tablets, for their class assignments. With such devices, “students can engage more 
frequently in learning activities outside of class, providing them with more 
learning opportunities in their community of practice” (p. 64). Technology opened 
up new avenues for interaction and learning, for teachers and potentially for their 
students. Students themselves confirm the value of active learning as a motivational 
tool, for example, as represented by Nicky Hockly’s (2013a) small, short study and 
companion analysis (2013b). Her beginner and low-intermediate students all 
owned mobile devices, but used only dictionary or translation apps. The majority 
of her students (n = 20), after using their mobile devices for language-learning 

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activities, such as a QR (quick response) treasure hunt that took them outside of 
the classroom, agreed that using such devices for group work and active learning 
“could help them improve their English, and that they would like to find out more 
ways to do so” (Hockly, 2013b, n.p.). The one exception to this general approval 
came from a student who was reluctant to take part in communicative activities of 
any sort. As Hockly’s studies suggest, students must be prepared not only to use 
the particular technologies chosen by the teacher, but also to understand and 
accept the value of communicative language teaching and learning as a pedagogi-
cal approach.
Both teachers and researchers using CALL, as the studies above suggest, have 
spoken freely of increased “motivation,” particularly where group or team activi-
ties are used with CALL. The work of social psychologists and researchers helps 
us pinpoint how such motivation operates, and explains the phenomenon 
expressed in Lin’s (2014) study described above, where certain types of CALL 
activity did not produce the expected results. Starting as early as Schraw (1998) 
and his predecessors, down to and including Columbia University’s popularizer, 
H. G. Halvorson (2009, for example), psychologists have undertaken a variety of 
experiments showing that, “Students with mastery orientation seek to improve 
their competence. Those with performance orientations seek to prove their com-
petence” (Schraw, 1998, p. 122). Students using CALL tools to create their own 
projects and learning schema are seeking mastery of their subject, not extrinsic 
approval.
A communicative classroom should largely consist of materials developed to 
encourage mastery orientation. This is the tack taken when considering the peda-
gogical implications of the various tools discussed in the next section. It should be 
noted that the TESOL Technology Standards (Healey et al., 2011) are based on this 
pedagogical premise, and the Standards’ vignettes of classroom activities and 
projects offer many examples of mastery-oriented learning for different levels of 
technology access.