LAVAC

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 design), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description

LAVAC (Laboratoire Audio-Visuel Actif-Comparatif) is a networked multimedia language-laboratory system developed for language instruction, providing linked student terminals, courseware-authoring tools, multimedia courseware, and teacher tutoring controls.

Components

• LAVAC computerized language laboratory toolkit: LAVAC (Laboratoire Audio-Visuel Actif-Comparatif) is a networked multimedia language laboratory consisting of "a complete network of student terminals, plus a courseware-design workstation, all linked to a server". A LAVAC courseware is a set of numbered segments linked to sound, images, videos, texts and tutor zones, up to six media, designed mainly for oral comprehension and production with 24 listening modes. It was the first to use a teacher's console for presential or distance tutoring, and around 5 000 software programs are used in more than 150 university departments and high schools in France and abroad. (Toma (2000))
• Virtual Recorder and Video Sequencer automatic segmenting devices: Derived from LAVAC, the Virtual Recorder (1998) is an audio sequencer with a new student interface that spares teachers linking text or images to sound segments; the Video Sequencer (March 1999) extends this to video. "The video sequencer can complete real-time automatic segmenting of sound and images and automatically insert an answering time span after each sequence." Segmenting detects blanks or volume drops in the sound signal, with tunable thresholds (language-sound level 5-15 on a 1-127 scale, blank duration 0.2 to 8 seconds, answering span 10 to 999% of segment length). Coupled to IBM ViaVoice, the teacher's spoken transcript is written with 90% accuracy for deriving textual help. (Toma (2000))

Claims

• Students are more attentive to the teacher's model track when they hear their own recording first [+W]
• Students pause the video after a few sequences to consult a segment menu and judge workload by segment count [+W]

Related Products and Programmes

-

Key Sources

• Toma, Tony. (2000). Real-Time Courseware Design: The LAVAC Video Sequencer. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED444508

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	lavac
title	LAVAC
description	LAVAC (Laboratoire Audio-Visuel Actif-Comparatif) is a networked multimedia language-laboratory system developed for language instruction, providing linked student terminals, courseware-authoring tools, multimedia courseware, and teacher tutoring controls.
status	review
moved_from	element/lavac-language-laboratory-toolkit, element/virtual-recorder-video-sequencer-devices
product_kind	software
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — toma-2000

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.