The CDROM

The Business Interaktiv CDROM was published in 1998 by Stanley Thornes (Publishers) Ltd, Cheltenham, UK (cservice@thornes.co.uk) .

The CDROM contains nine graded modules taken from course material written by Dr.Ruth Whittle and Dr.Gabrielle Hogan-Brun when they worked together in Oxford, and it has been further developed since they moved to the Universities of Birmingham and Bristol respectively. Each module aims to teach German language within the context of a particular Swiss or German company and covers topics of economic interest.

The modules contain glossaries, interviews recorded with management personnel, role-play exercises, and background reading and are aimed at students of advanced Business German who need to specialise linguistically in order to prepare for international careers in industry.

The multimedia CDROM was produced by Mike Beilby (of CBLProjects).

There are nine modules each focus on an organisation based in Germany or Switzerland. The organisations are as follows;

• Der Grüne Punkt, which is involved in recycling waste (- you must have seen the label)
• KPMG, the management consultants,
• Kambly, the makers of (very nice!) biscuits,
• Swissair, the airline,
• Michel AG, an electronics company,
• Geistlich AG, a pharmaceuticals company,
• Deinhard, the producers of fine German wines,
• Wander, a pharmaceuticals company, and
• Ackermann, a mail-order company.

The modules are structured. In each module there are the following components:

• a topic-orientated glossary, with sound and and vocabulary tests which are in different forms, including both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The glossary offers the main terminology used in the other sections and would normally be completed as the first stage in the coursework;

• a set of interviews (lasting 10-15 minutes) to which students listen and about which they answer questions and perform tasks (e.g. gap-filling, paraphrasing, and open-ended comment), and

• graded role-plays which focus on aspects of the interview and which simulate authentic situations as they might occur in the organisations.

In each module the components are accessed from the following menu ...

The components introduce student activities, which are supported by profiles of the companies and by background reading taken from specialist literature. The following illustrations are extracts from the module on the pharmaceutical company Geistlich AG.

The project has produced a CDROM which is suited for learners in Higher Education (- in particular the material is being used at Birmingham and Bristol to support Ruth's and Gabrielle's own courses in their respective departments -) or in companies with an interest in Business/Economics, Environmental Studies, Management Training, Export, Personnel Management, Industrial Management and Engineering.

The materials are displayed using Asymetrix Toolbook 4.0, a run-time version of which is included on the CDROM.

The interviews comprise an audio recording of about 10 minutes discussion between Ruth or Gabrielle with a representative of the personnel management of a firm. Synchronised with topics in the interview is a visual presentation consisting of a sequence of stills.

It was not within the scope of the project, or the capacity of the CDROM, to include full video (nor did the pedagogy require it!)

The CDROM can be used on an IBM-PC compatible with a minimum specification of a 486 processor, a 2-speed CDROM drive, a soundcard, and 8 MByte RAM. The program requires Windows 3.1 or Windows 95/98 installed and uses a standard MCI interface.

This project has been fortunate in having had the support of the Department of German Studies and Information Services at the University of Birmingham, and the Language Centre at the University of Bristol. The materials were collected over an extended period of time. The conversion to computer-based media started in 1994 and was completed by October 1997.

The work has been described in papers presented at several conferences including

• Association for Language Learning, University of York, 1995
• British Association for Applied Linguistics, University of Southampton, 1995
• British Educational Research Association, University of Lancaster, 1996
• International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 1996