Emory University
Interactive DVD for teaching Italian
When an Emory lecturer in Italian wished to convert her textbook into a DVD of images, audio, and video to complement the printed word, Alarcón Design had the technical ability to produce Interactive Multimedia Instruction (IMI)/Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) courseware with the interactivity that Emory required.
The instructor had authored an Italian language textbook that integrated her creative teaching methods, blending real people, art, food, and landmarks with the language to engage her students with the culture immediately. The robust DVD we created from her text, rendered entirely in Italian, became a virtual tour guide of the land and the language. Teaching materials were organized by region, so that students could progress systematically through Italy. Alarcón incorporated previous interviews with residents, allowing students to hear different dialects, embedded links to related online resources, and allowed for easy printing of discrete sections of text. A DVD was included with each copy of the textbook and was sent to several other colleges' language departments, where it garnered much interest as a prototype. "This was the first DVD that was developed for the department, taking the old technology and making it paperless," says Marco Alarcón, agency founder. "I also was charged with making sure the disk could not be duplicated, so that proprietary information was secure." The result: a portable, interactive, less expensive text that taught Italian through a total immersion experience, anytime, anywhere.

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