IALLT Language Center Director Survey, 2015
IALLT periodically surveys the community of language center/lab directors to investigate the state of language centers and the positions and duties of their directors. To disseminate the findings of the 2015 survey to the IALLT membership, we present here the results of key questions regarding language center management and design. To maximize the usefulness of the results, they are reported by institution type and size. We include data such as the average budget and allocations for language centers, the director’s average salary, the director’s typical teaching load, and how recently the typical center has been completely redesigned. We also provide data on new space usage patterns in language centers.
This presentation has been adapted from a similar presentation by Kronenberg & Lavolette (2015) at FLEAT VI, and includes answers to some of the questions that the audience asked.
You are invited to leave your questions and comments below. The authors will respond as promptly as they can.
IALLT Language Center Director Survey, 2015
8 Comments
Thanks for a good and detailed presentation. One of the things that I’m wondering is about the information that you don’t have (so of course it will be hard for you to answer…). How many language centers are left out of the survey simply because the director didn’t know about the survey, for example?
Also, did you ask about what are the main activities of the language centers? Some of the answers to the open-ended questions that you included said things about support (as an example). But was there more detail about what exactly that means? I would find it interesting to know, for example, are language centers more involved in events versus consultation.
Shannon, thanks for your questions. I don’t think anyone has counted the total number of language centers globally, but I’d be interested to find out the total number as well.
As for your second question, I can provide a partial answer. In response to the question, “Which of the following apply to your center/lab? (check all that apply),” we got the following results:
37 Provides classroom instruction
41 Facilitates project work
36 Provides online spaces
32 Provides nontraditional spaces
32 Provides social spaces
28 Provides event spaces
25 Plans events
35 Provides professional development
39 Provides technological support
30 Maintains the center/lab’s own hardware and equipment
10 Maintains hardware and equipment for other units or faculty
16 Provides support for languages not taught at your institution
10 Other (written responses included community outreach, recruitment, conducting research, supporting research and grant projects, providing language tutoring, providing foreign language television to academic buildings, remedial support, providing space for students to work independently, providing classroom space, and supporting co-curricular activities)
I should also mention that the total number of directors who responded to the question was 45, so each of the numbers above is out of 45.
First of all, I love this format. Second, thanks for putting this together, Betsy. I had all my questions answered about the survey during the FLEAT conference, but it is really nice to have this information archived to review.
Thanks, Amanda! The next survey will be much improved thanks to the comments we got a FLEAT VI.
Great compilation of the data and discussion. Very useful.
A couple of observations:
* On Slide 9 (Who do you report to?), you had a subset of LRC directors reporting to Language Center Directors. I oriented to your comments as implying these reports were submitted by LRC “coordinators” or day-to-day operators of the center acting in the stead of the director. My experience with Language Centers is that the directors act much like department chairs at some institutions, in others more like course managers, but almost without exception dependent on the LRC Director for leadership in CALL. I’m wondering if the tendency to conflate the two might be the reason why we have only 3 respondents in that area? There are certainly many many more LRCs operating under the aegis of Language Centers…
*For the slides Felix narrates…some mobile devices aren’t able to pause like the laptop/desktops can on the narrations, and it was like watching a blur go by (slides 21, 22, and 24 especially). I was able to get to a desktop to hit the “pause” button on those, though…
Doug, I’m not sure what the distinction is that you are making between “language centers” and “language resource centers.” Our intention (hopefully clear in the directions to the survey itself) was that we include centers that call themselves both things, although not the grant-funded national foreign language resource centers.
Sorry about the far-from-perfect support for mobile devices.
Hi Betsy; We met at FLEAT VI last year, a conference that I appreciated very much. Thank you for your and Felix’s work on this survey, whose results I’ve also read in the language center design booklet.
I anxiously await the posting of the recent webinar on the LCD toolkit, and have been doing so since May.
Please think of us here at UC Davis when your next survey is ready to roll out. We have two language centers, one of which I will be in charge of, and would be happy to participate.