Our research team:

Michael Skrigitil (PhD candidate), department of Computer Science.
Dr. Ulrike Stege (principal investigator), department of Computer Science;
Dr. Michael Masson, department of Psychology;

We are from the University of Victoria located in British Columbia, Canada. If you have questions regarding this research you may contact us at: Michael Skrigitil (mskrigitil@uvic.ca), Dr. Ulrike Stege (ustege@uvic.ca), Dr. Michael Masson (mmasson@uvic.ca).

As a PhD candidate, I (Michael Skrigitil) am required to conduct research as part of the requirements for a PhD degree in Computer Science. It is being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Ulrike Stege. You may contact my supervisor at 1-(250)- 472-5729.

About this study

This research aims to develop new effective methods to help adults (19+ years old) acquire a new language in a virtual environment constructed to simulate a context driven language acquisition process. In this study we simulate situations one may encounter in real life, give participants limited vocabulary up front, and ask them to learn new vocabulary and grammar from the context of a virtual scene (see a bus stop scene for example[link]).

Importance of this Research

One of the best ways to learn a new language is to acquire it in the country of the language's origin. Not everyone can afford a trip to a foreign country. With this research, we aim to emulate such an immersive experience online, test its effectiveness and develop methodology for future online language learning platforms.

What is involved

If you consent to voluntarily participate in this research, we will ask you to register on our website with your email. You will be randomly assigned to learn new material with either a context-based method or a more conventional one (where vocabulary and grammar are given up front). You will get to learn new vocabulary and grammar and take a comprehensive test. Once assignments are completed, we will be happy to show your progress along with some basic statistics (new words or phrases learned, errors made, etc.). There are 10 assignments with each designed to take no longer than 20 minutes. You will have 7 days to complete all the assignments at your own pace. All activities will take place online. Our website is running on a server located in Canada and hence is subject to Canadian laws and regulations.

Time commitmentd

You can participate in this study and take exercises at your own pace, but we recommend to allocate at least 20 minutes a day and complete all the tasks within a week.

Risks

There are no known or anticipated risks to you by participating in this research.

Benefits

You will get to learn a bit of Russian and help move the language learning research forward.

Participation

Your participation in this research must be completely voluntary. If you do decide to participate, you may withdraw at any time without any consequences or any explanation. If you do withdraw from the study your account along with all your data will be deleted from our server. Please also note after you complete your participation your account will be anonymized (we will remove your email address from the database) and hence it won't be possible to delete your individual data if you request it.

Anonymity

To protect your anonymity we won’t collect any personal identifiers other than your email address (to register and create an account on our website). The email address will be deleted from our system once you complete your participation or withdraw from the experiment. The online communication between your browser and the server will be secured through the standard SSL protocol. We won’t share your email address with anyone outside of our research team.

Confidentiality and data collection

We will also ask the following questions and save your answers:
What is your age group?
In how many languages are you able to informally converse with people?
Is your first language Slavic (that is Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian)?
Have you ever taken a course in a Slavic/Russian language, if so how many courses?
How good you consider yourself to be at math?

We will collect your responses as you navigate our virtual scenes (see the bus stop scene for example[link]). The data will be stored on a secured server in the Microsoft Azure Cloud in a datacenter located in Canada.

Dissemination of Results

The data we collect may be published in aggregated or de-identified form only in one or more scientific journals, thesis/dissertation, at class presentations, at scholarly meetings, on this website, on the UVic public web pages. As mentioned before, the only personal identifier we collect (your email address) will be deleted from our server at the end of the study and will not be shared with anyone nor will it be published anywhere.

Disposal of Data

We plan to improve our online experiment as we learn from the data and would like to have the opportunity to analyze it and compare it with the data collected in future modified versions of our experiment. Hence, we will keep the raw data indefinitely. We will keep the data in a strictly de-identified form (with no personal identifiers) on the same secure server.

Contacts

In addition to the contacts listed at beginning of this form, you may verify the ethical approval of this study, or raise any concerns you might have, by contacting the Human Research Ethics Office at the University of Victoria (250-472-4545 or ethics@uvic.ca). If you have further questions and wish to contact us, please submit your request at mskrigitil@uvic.ca.

By completing and submitting the questionnaire, YOUR FREE AND INFORMED CONSENT IS IMPLIED and indicates that you understand the above conditions of participation in this study and that you have had the opportunity to have your questions answered by the researchers.

If you are 19+ years old, agree to the above consent form, and wish to participate in the study please click "I agree" to proceed to the questionnaire.