Celebrating Technology for Language Learning

One of the most exciting annual events in the English department each year is the Technology for Second Language Learning (TSLL) conference. Started in 2003 by the TESL/applied linguistics faculty, it has continually grown over the past three years due to the interest in generative artificial intelligence. The conference theme for the 21st annual conference was Researching the Language and Use of Generative AI, and the following year it was Building knowledge of generative AI in Applied Linguistics. The theme for 2026, Constructed agents—From Imagination to Real Interaction, expands the humanistic perspectives of the conference with presentations of nonhuman agents in literature and film. The faculty conference organizers this year include literature professor Dr. Rochelle Zuck in addition to last year’s faculty leaders Dr. Carol Chapelle, Dr. Bethany Gray, and Dr. Sinem Sonsaat-Hegelheimer.

A notable aspect of the conference is the operational framework itself. After the Covid-19 pandemic, the TSLL conference began a hybrid hosting model. Not only is the conference held in Ross Hall, but attendees from all over the world can join on Zoom to either listen to talks or present their own research. Last year’s conference began on Wednesday, November 5th, and ran through the 8th. Each day there were plenary speakers, research talks, and virtual poster sessions hosted on Moodle for people to attend asynchronously. Attendees could participate in in-person or remote sessions in the rooms in Ross Hall, where they were able to pose questions to the presenter. The many other attendees joining via zoom typically posed their questions through the chat tool. This dynamic set up, which was impressively orchestrated by members of the conference organizing team, consisting of Dr. Mahdi Duris and students in TESL/applied linguistics and applied linguistics and technology, allows for extensive participation on campus, in Iowa, and throughout the world. When asked what the biggest success was, Chapelle answered, “Things went smoothly…. With so many moving parts, it really feels like a huge success when everything works. It’s also very rewarding to bring in this different research from all over the world. The participation in the conference is a valuable learning experience for students.”

Students play a critical role in the event. Students on the organizing committee are involved in the whole process from sending out the call for proposals to deciding which abstracts get accepted to troubleshooting during the event. There are also a lot of “fun tasks,” as Gray notes, which she has been involved in helping with. Catering needs to be organized for each day, rooms need to be set up, and each session needs to have moderators to manage time, introduce each of the speakers, and manage the question-and-answer period following each presentation. With over 50 speaker slots filled per conference and over 1700 registered for the conference in 2025, it is easy to understand Chapelle’s point that the biggest success is that things went smoothly.

Most attended via Zoom, but others joined us in Ames— including alumni from Turkey, Taiwan, and Texas—to share the 20th anniversary “birthday” cake for the program, meet each other, and catch up. One event that got a very positive reception was the reunion Zoom breakout rooms. Since the conference is a hybrid in-person and virtual format, there were Zoom rooms for alumni of the program to enter and socialize.

Participants exercised their program history memory with a trivia game that Sonsaat-Hegelheimer created just for the occasion. The game was topped only by the media she created showing images and videos of people across the past 20 years of the doctoral program. She had reached out to faculty, past officemates, and everyone she could think of to try and collect as many funny and iconic moments in the program history.

The 2025 reunion was a precious opportunity to reconnect with Cyclones around the globe. It was well worth the work it took to organize it, according to Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, who was pleased that everything went so smoothly and couldn’t pinpoint any significant problems.

A lasting record of recent TSLL conferences has been created in open books, published by the ISU Digital Press, containing selected conference papers that have been reviewed and edited. Open books are free to download, and many scholars, researchers, and teachers have been doing that. The 2023 conference book, Exploring AI in Applied Linguistics, has been downloaded over 34,000 times. As the preparations for this year’s conference are well underway, faculty and students are excited about creating another novel event to celebrate technology for language learning with people from around the world.