Reflection on CALICO 2026
- Eduling
- Jul 12
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 13
On July 7–11, we (Dr. Linh Phung and Nikolas Wolfe from Eduling) attended the CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) Conference at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Founded in 1809, Miami University is one of the oldest public universities in the United States. With 18,000 students, it is recognized for its beautiful campus, outstanding undergraduate education, and strong tradition of innovation in teaching and learning.
Miami derives from myaamia, which means the downstream people, who originating from the Great Lakes region including Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, lower Michigan, and lower Wisconsin. After forced removals, they are now recognized as the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, a Sovereign Nation, by the U.S. federal government.
Our conference experience began with a five-hour road trip from Pittsburgh, PA to Oxford, Ohio. We arrived just in time for the opening reception, where it was wonderful to reconnect with longtime colleagues including Greg Kessler, who just joined our Language Innovators podcast and Misty Wilson from Immerse. We also met many new colleagues from around the world.
The evening concluded with great conversations over beer with Jeff Samuels from World Languages 360, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing multilingual education through networking, scholarship, innovative teaching, and partnerships between educators and organizations.
Jeff also represents the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT), a professional organization focusing on instructional technology for the teaching and learning of languages, literatures, and cultures. IALLT's next conference will be IALLT Conference 2027 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on June 16-19.
The first full day of the conference was packed with presentations. Many sessions explored how artificial intelligence can support language learning and teaching by examining how faculty incorporated AI-mediated activities into their classes as well as whether AI-learner conversations support learning through language-related episodes. Others that we attended focused on proficiency gains in app-based learning, resources in/for indigenous languages, and academia-industry partnerships.
The Thursday keynote by Soroush Sabbaghan (pictured below) emphasized the importance of protecting human interaction, student agency, and productive struggle as we design new learning environments informed by learning theories.
Reflecting on the role that Eduling plays, Eduling prepares learners to achieve goals through communicative tasks while encouraging learner-to-learner interaction and teacher guidance. The productive struggle occurs in task-based interactions when learners negotiate meaning and struggle with language. Task-based interactions serve as a mechanism for second language development and as practice for real-life communicative tasks and connections with real people. In addition, once learners accomplish those goals, they can move on to the next stage of their academic, professional, or personal journey.
Friday provided a more relaxed pace, highlighted by the now-popular LaunchPad competition, where Eduling had proudly competed as a finalist in 2023.
The evening award ceremony was followed by a memorable dinner at a German beer pub, where we sampled an impressive variety of beers while enjoying lively conversations and plenty of laughter.
The conference concluded on a high note for us with our presentation titled Designing Task-based Interactions with AI Chatbots for Language Development, which was very well received. Participants appreciated our emphasis on task-based learning, interaction, and advancing the field by designing AI models that behave in ways that optimize conditions for second language learning through comprehensible input, negotiation of meaning, focus on form, and corrective feedback.
One participant told us that the Eduling app was “the best app I’ve seen at the conference.” Hearing such encouraging feedback from fellow researchers and educators made the week especially rewarding. Check out the Eduling app from the App Store or Google Play.
We look forward to continuing to engage with CALICO colleagues through research, materials development, business partnerships, and conversations on our Language Innovators podcast and elsewhere. CALICO 2027 will be at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and will be the "coolest" conference ever!
Thanks for the shoutout and for the lovely dinner (pictured above). I really enjoyed your presentation too, and found your approach to the design of Eduling and of the user interface to be differentiating. Best of luck to you as you spread the word and deploy increasing functionality and language options!