Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

An exciting opportunity has come up for us here at the Faculty of Arts, UBC. The Vancouver Olympic Committee has contacted our faculty with a request to contribute expertise from the Language & Literature Departments to assess the linguistic skills of hundreds of multi-lingual volunteers to the Olympic Games in Vancouver-Whistler 2010. What's unique about this initiative is that the language assessment is carried out completely online, which means our support team here at Arts ISIT is responsible to develop an online environment to accommodate the language assessment needs.

I think this is the first time in the Olympics history that volunteers' language skills are being assessed via the web. Including 2008 Beijing Olympics, volunteers have been interviewed either in person or on the phone. Starting later 2008, the Vancouver Olympic committee will use the system we are putting together using voice board and learning management systems, to develop a pilot for the expected 900 volunteers to be assessed in Asian and European language skills.