On Friday, September 26, and Saturday, September 27, 2008, faculty and students from the TESL/Applied Linguistics and Technology Program in the Department of English hosted the sixth annual Conference on Technology for Second Language Learning. The theme this year was Developing and Evaluating Learning Materials. The conference brought together concepts and practices in the development and evaluation of materials for technology-assisted language learning.

The invited speakers were Dorothy Chun (University of California at Santa Barbara), Sue Otto and James Pusack (University of Iowa), and Sherry Preiss (Pearson Education). Presenters came from Michigan State University, Grinnell College, and Iowa State University.

A total of 60 people attended the conference (39 students and 21 non-students). Participants found the conference stimulating and worthwhile, and the TESL/ALT faculty is planning to host the next conference in 2009.

The organizers and participants of the 2008 conference are grateful to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, and the Program in Linguistics at Iowa State University for making this conference possible through their financial support.