About
Mission
The Digital Language Lab’s mission is to provide resources, facilities, and support for language instruction and learning to the entire Stanford community. State-of-the-art teaching spaces, enterprise level software resources, and expert support personnel combine to make the Stanford Digital Language Lab a dynamic and highly efficient teaching and learning facility. The Digital Language Lab is the multilingual computing and assessment hub at Stanford. The lab also hopes to serve as physical and virtual cross-cultural encounter environment. The lab supports a variety of large scale online assessments in Canvas, including Oral Diagnostic Assessments (ODAs), EFS placement reading tests, and 600+ Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews (SOPIs) every Spring Quarter.
History
The Stanford Digital Language Lab opened in April 1999 as a joint venture between the Stanford Libraries, Academic Computing and the Stanford Language Center. A generous donation from the President’s Fund covered much of the cost of this sizable renovation. The design of the Lab reflects a dramatic shift away from conventional modes of delivering foreign language instruction toward the Stanford Language Center’s ambitious program of large-scale, proficiency-based instruction grounded in program-wide, online assessment and access to enhanced learning spaces.