Developing Online Resources for Persian Language Learners, Challenges and Solutions

This study primarily looks at the challenges that exist in the development of online language resources for Persian language learners and offers possible methodological and technical solutions to tackle those challenges. With the expansion of Persian language courses across the US colleges and universities, there comes the question that what is the best that technology can offer in order to further enhance language teaching and learning process. Audio, video, animation, illustrations, interactive assignments, text-to-speech, speech recognition and class management systems are some of the available technology that can be embedded to any e-learning platform. However, teachers are left with a lot of confusions as to what extent these tools are effective and how to use them effectively.
In this study, the rationale behind the idea of using assistive technology for the purpose of enhancing language teaching and learning will be accounted for first and then few practical examples will be demonstrated to show some of the best practices in the development of effective assistive technology for the language classroom. One of the resource development projects completed by the author is named Persian Learner’s Dictionary. This resource has been developed as an smartphones app for elementary Persian learners. Some of the challenges in the development of this valuable resource will be demonstrated and solutions will be discussed in details.