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AIRLINE TALK
INFORMATION DESK

The Airline Talk project has developed a set of multimedia CD-ROM language training materials for the airline industry.

The project responds to a specific need of the airline industry, namely the training of airline staff in foreign languages to enable them to offer assistance to the travelling public.The project was initiated in February 1997 and will be completed in August 2001.

Both commercial and educational partners are collaborating in the project.

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A project funded under the Leonardo da Vinci Programme of the Commission of the European Communities

Contents of this page

About the project

Airline Talk is a project that involves the development of a set of multimedia language training materials in CD-ROM format for check-in staff, customer services staff and cabin crew. The languages targeted in Phase 1 of the project, which began in early 1997, were English, Spanish and German. In Phase 2, which began in early 2000, French and Italian were included in the project. The training materials include specialised vocabulary and scenarios common to most airlines. A template approach to the authoring of the materials has been adopted, so that the materials are flexible and adaptable and can be readily adapted for additional languages - see Working methods.

The project partners

The Airline Talk project is being developed by a consortium of partners:

Educational partners

Airline partners

Virgin Atlantic have also offered considerable help by providing the educational partners with access to check-in staff at Gatwick Airport and cabin crew training sessions at Virgin's Flight Centre. By arrangement with Aer Lingus, observation of check-in staff at Düsseldorf Airport has also taken place.

Commercial partner

The products

Five different CD-ROMs have been produced:

CD-ROM-based materials are ideally suited to self-access learning. The materials are designed for use by trainees on personal computers in airline training centres or at home.

The Airline Talk CD-ROMs have been specially designed for ease of use and are packed with advanced multimedia features:

The CD-ROMs will also be linked to this website, where updates and supplementary information and exercises will be made available.

The CD-ROMs include a number of scenarios centred around standard and "crisis" situations taking place in seven different areas of an airport, all of which are accessible via the navigation screen.

Standard situations include straightforward transactions such as a passenger checking in for a flight. Crisis situations include, for example, a passenger who has lost his baggage. Click here to listen to a passenger expressing his complaint (in German) about his family not being seated together: Angry Passenger.

The Airline Talk navigation screen

The navigation screen and the Airline Talk logo (top left of this page) were designed by Siân Davies, MDM Creative.

Working methods

The project began with a thorough needs analysis, and all the scenarios were identified and checked with the airline partners.

Multimedia CD-ROMs provide a highly interactive means of learning, but the complexity involved in producing them means that it can take a considerable amount of time to assemble and test out the functionality contained within the programs they contain. In order to develop the CD-ROMs in a manageable way, the project team developed a series of templates for exercise types, which enabled standardisation of exercises to enable functions to be programmed cost-effectively. The programs were created with Macromedia Director: http://www.macromedia.com/uk

The stages involved in the development of the products were as follows:

The template approach to CD-ROM development is described in detail by Ana Gimeno in Module 3.2 at the ICT4LT website: CALL software design and implementation: http://www.ict4lt.org

Public presentations

Airline Talk has been presented publicly at:

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