"Most successful FL learning takes place with no technology support at all."

'Optimal Psycholinguistic Environments for Distance Foreign Language Learning' (Doughty and Long, 2003) is a very good article ...if you are interested in task-based language teaching, or non-traditional FL teaching. It provides good description of methodological principles for TBLT. However, I thought that discussion of the distance learning was not the strongest point of this article. Perhaps, as the authors mentioned, it was because no such course had been developed yet, so their argument was not supported by strong evidence.
But what I thought was interesting is that they said that the most successful FL learning takes place with no technology support at all. However, it involves a lot of resources ...that many schools today do not have; it would involve smaller classes and therefore a larger number of classes, larger number of FL instructors, etc.

Using Technology in Chinese Class

In the last few weeks I've been trying to run a mini-experiment. Nothing ambitious, just to try something out.
I teach Chinese 102 and our classes are very large (about 20 students in each), so naturally student's don't have very many chances to speak in class, so there is very little output (aural and written). What I did was I created a google document with some assignments for students. These are not mandatory and I cannot give students extra points or anything like that (since I am a TA not an instructor of record). It is simply for those who want to have extra practice.

The tasks are different: sometimes it is as simple as translating several sentences (usually with 'unique' Chinese grammar), sometimes I post several questions and students answer one, or sometimes I post a Chinese song (which includes subtitles) and ask questions about it. Students can see each others answers, but they have to write their own. I respond either individually or 'collectively' depending on the task.

The results are: some students participate in every activity and some in selective activities (possibly they are too busy, or simply don't want to do it). Some students have very short entries (i.e. 我 想 吃素，因為 素 好吃 ) and some have longer ones (我在家不做饭， 因为我的妈妈做饭。我只帮她做饭。她做饭做得好极了。每个她的菜我都喜欢吃。 但是我在图森的时候我自己要做饭。 我的菜没有我妈妈的菜好吃。所以我的爸爸常常说我得学怎么做饭。我觉得做饭很难。). Out of 20 people I have 9 participating at this point (of course there also students who seemed to be excited to do it, but when it came to actual doing, gave up).

The results are not exactly thrilling, but as I said it is just a trial. What I like about it is students can see other classmates answers (and they all go by their Chinese names, so I'm not sure if they recognize the other people's names). What could be improved is it could involve more collaboration.