Team Interactive Language Learning - Gemstone

Welcome to the Webpage of Gemstone's Team ILL

Team Interactive Language Learning (ILL) is a senior team in the University of Maryland's Gemstone Undergraduate Research Program. Our team's goal is to create, program, and implement a multiplayer online computer game to help teach English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to middle school students. The game was completed in May 2009, and in June, the team tested the game with students in Bates and Annapolis Middle Schools, both in the Anne Arundel County Public School system. Currently, the team is partnering with the Mi Espacio after-school program in Baltimore to test with additonal students, and performing statistical analysis on the data collected thus far.

In completing this project, our team hopes to answer the question, "How effective is an interactive multiplayer computer game as a motivational tool for students?", and be able to make recommendations for the future use of computer games as educational and motivational tools.

This website contains basic information about the game itself, seen in the links at the top left. This information will be updated as the project progresses. To the top right are links to information about the team members, as well as important information about the research project itself and links to other websites related to our research.

We have also created a video in which we describe our project more in-depth. You can download this video by clicking here. This file is a 8.4 megabyte Windows Media Player file. We suggest to right-click on the link and select "Save Target As" and save the video to your computer for viewing.

We hope you find your visit enjoyable, and if you have any questions about our project or the game, please feel free to contact us at our team email.