Hi all! I have a situation and question for language lab/center folks, that I hope this community might be able to help with!

 

Situation:

We have a new, small language lab that opened a couple years ago. There are no dividers between computers, as students are often working with partners as well as recording and/or listening. The headsets are excellent and we’ve not had complaints (except the one below) about sound quality in recordings.  We used to have a traditional lab with independent computer stations surrounded by tall sound-dampening (and interaction-dampening!) panels.

 

Issue:

We have a phonetics course that has expressed that the new lab isn’t a quiet enough environment for students to record themselves at very high quality, and listen for ear training and linguistic analysis.

 

Question:

Are there inexpensive materials that we could easily install only when this particular course needs to use the lab, 4-6x/year? I’d like to accommodate the course, but we don’t have funds to invest in anything like the large sound-dampening panels of old (and have no interest in going back to the lab setup of putting students in tiny boxes, either!).

 

Just wondering if anyone has faced this issue, and how you handled it.
thanks!

 

Hope

 

Hope Fitzgerald

Instructional Designer, Language Commons

A&S Learning Design & Technology

University of Virginia

Hf6v@virginia.edu