 The digital revolution, in particular the computer and the Internet, have had an enormous impact on all academic disciplines. Of these disciplines, linguistics may be considered as one that has been affected most. Teaching, learning and assessment, as well as research, have undergone dramatic changes in recent years. This presentation points out the challenges and consequences for our subject as a consequence of the use of the new media. Let us look at the challenges we have been facing first. Now, linguistics is not taught at school. Students of linguistics thus have little or no prior knowledge about the field. So as teachers, we have to introduce more fundamentals than many of us would like to do. Well, the Internet has completely changed the field of research. Now all linguistic data is on the web, in many cases freely accessible at any time from anywhere. And like any other science, linguistics has developed a large number of models and theories. These have to be presented and, as it seems, digital representations have a higher explanatory value than traditional presentations in print. Well, and modern linguists use a variety of tools, of programs, of software in order to do their research. These tools have to be introduced, they have to be explained and mastered, another challenge for teachers and students. And the last point concerns assessment. Traditionally, testing in linguistics has been static in many ways. Using digital scenarios, however, new assessment types that increase the quality of traditional assessment are possible yet another challenge. Let me exemplify these challenges in detail. Let's start with the lack of foundations. As I already said, linguistics is not taught at school, so we have to start from scratch. Let us take the main branches of linguistics as an example. Students who start linguistics have little or no idea about consonants or vowels about articulatory phonetics. They do not know what a phoneme is, two fundamental concepts in phonetics and phonology. Well, in morphology, we have to explain the most basic concepts such as the term affix, what a word is, and so on and so forth. Well, and in syntax, there are so many new concepts that have to be explained among them thematic roles. And even if you continue with the field of meaning in semantics, well, students might know what a synonym is, but the meaning of sentences here illustrated by some symbols taken from predicate logic never heard before. Well, and in pragmatics, you have to explain such basic concepts like conversational principles, speech acts, dikesis, and so on and so forth. In other words, we are faced with beginners and the introduction of even the most fundamental concepts constitutes an essential part of teaching and learning in linguistics. The primary data in linguistics comes from the languages of the world, either in written or in spoken form. Whereas in the past, the data was either presented in written form only with no audio verification possible. Today, the data is on the web. It exists in huge written or spoken corpora and can be analyzed and used freely. Here is an example from our language index. This is a huge database which contains audio files from more than a thousand languages of the world. I chose this example because I need it later on. Here is what Dalia says about herself. Welcome all on our Confuser linguistics website here. My name is Dalia. I'm a chat path. Now, such data is now freely accessible. Using the data, however, has brought about a new challenge. As modern linguists, we are now confronted with a variety of linguistic software tools and data repositories that we have to understand and use. In other words, linguistic software training has become an essential part of modern linguistic education. In linguistics, the modeling of hypotheses and theories have always played an essential role in education and research. Let me illustrate this with three examples. The first comes from our language index again. Now, let me look at Dalia's diphthongs. If you want to present the diphthongs of a language and you want to show the transitional paths of their glides in a traditional format, you are confronted with enormous presentational problems. But if you use a multimedia format, these problems disappear and we can easily enhance the explanatory value of our presentation. Now, here you see in a multimedia format, we cannot only listen to the diphthong, but we can also see the transition of that particular diphthong. Or take these two examples. To illustrate the phenomenon of feature association in non-linear phonology, an interactive model is much more appropriate than a written model or a diagram in a book, because here you see the dynamicness of feature association in a multimedia format. And have you ever seen Chomsky's rule of affix hopping in action? Well, here it is. Select the verb group and let the affixes hop. Again. And if you want another one, here you are. Well, compare that with the written explanation. I don't think I have to add anything. As I already mentioned, linguistic software is now an important issue. Today, a variety of software tools can be used to handle linguistic data or to construct linguistic models. There are audio analysis tools such as PRAT, Audacity, or several wave editors. We have graphic tools such as Urban View or GIMP. There are several corpus interfaces and data repositories around. And last but not least, modern web technologies that allow us to integrate language maps, speaker locations, and many more now constitute a major part of linguistic web technologies. Well, in assessment, pen and paper tests have been used in linguistics for a long time. But now with the new technologies available, we can enhance these tests enormously. We can use virtual keyboards, for example, and sound support in transcription tasks like the one that is displayed over here, a typical task in our phonetics classes on the virtual linguistics campus. Or we can confront our students with listening tasks where they have to identify pulmonic consonants via mouse click after having heard them. And these tests can be used in a diagnostic fashion, in a formative fashion, and even as summative assessments like we displayed it over here. Now, these are our e-exams at the University of Marburg in linguistics, where first of all our students have to register and then almost 100 students write their e-exam together in the computer pool of the computing department. Well, and this of course not only enhances the quality of testing, but also minimizes our effort of grading and correction. All these new challenges have changed our discipline, most obviously as far as teaching and learning is concerned. So we obviously need a new teaching concept. Now, with the availability of digital learning materials, many linguistics classes can now be organized in such a way that content delivery takes place online and serves as a prerequisite for subsequent in-class meetings. The in-class meetings now serve a different purpose with the emphasis on practicing. This approach that flips or inverts the phases of content delivery and practicing is referred to as the inverted classroom model. Alternative terms for this model are flip classroom, a term which is especially used in the context of the North American high schools. But how does this model really work? To understand it, let's first of all look at traditional teaching. In traditional teaching, content delivery and content acquisition are realized in class, where several dozens of students have to gather at the same time to be entertained by their teacher. Many of them fall asleep after 10 minutes, isn't it? In a second phase, students practice on their own, on the basis of additional exercise material, homework tasks, data analysis and so on. Now the inverted classroom flips or inverts these two activities. Content acquisition is now self-guided, takes place first and is done online. The additional in-class phase is now dedicated to practicing, rehearsing, discussion analysis, etc. This means that prior to each in-class meeting, students must have worked through the online content of the respective e-learning unit. And how does this work on the virtual linguistics campus? Well, in phase one, students are now autonomous learners. They are given the content by means of what we call an e-learning unit. This contains the content they have to go through prior, emphasis on prior to each in-class meeting. The content of an e-learning unit is multimodal. It involves all sorts of channels. In all our classes, we supply our students with highly interactive multimedia content, the so-called virtual sessions. In addition to this, students can watch our e-lectures on YouTube. These are never longer than 20 minutes and they are closely interconnected with the virtual sessions. Furthermore, we have our optional workbooks. They supply our students with the text material of each unit, but not with any other media, and give them the opportunity to supplement the text with the online content. This combination of multimedia, video and text is unparalleled in the world of e-education. In short, mastering the content of a unit means go through the virtual session first, use the guiding questions for help, watch the corresponding e-lecture video, and use the tests in the interactive tutor and optionally supplement the workbook with the missing information. And the important point is there is no pressure. Students now have access to the content as often as they like and from wherever they like. They can examine the virtual sessions with almost no limit. They can rewind their teacher in the e-lectures and they have numerous options to test themselves using the interactive tutor. Actually, this is what they really do. They take their workbooks, they use their computers, or their mobile devices such as iPads, tablet computers, or their smartphones, wherever and whenever possible. And once they're ready and once they've mastered it all, they attend the subsequent in-class meeting. Now, the in-class meeting is no longer any sort of frontal teaching, so this scenario is clearly out. Instead, the central, you might still want to call it teaching method, is that of a cooperative interaction between instructor and students. Honestly, for us, it doesn't make sense to teach in the traditional format anymore. Why should we repeat what's in an e-learning unit? So what we do in class instead is practicing, discussing problems, the analysis of data, all those things that students would have done on their own at home without any assistant. Now we do the homework, it's not really any homework anymore, in class. We discuss problems with our students and collaborate. Now, typical in-class scenarios look like these. And this is what happens in class. The instructor walks around and provides help or gives advice. And the students work on specific tasks on their own with guidance by their teacher. So this is a typical in-class scenario in the inverted classroom, where frontal teaching is no longer a central option. And how do we make sure that students do everything we want them to do in phase one? That is, that they master the e-learning unit prior to the in-class meeting? Well, for this purpose we have our formative electronic assessments, the e-tests that are mentioned earlier on. Each e-learning unit is connected with an electronic test, that is, an electronic formative assessment in the true sense. Their results shape the organization of the in-class phase. And what about the role of the instructor? Well, we have changed our role completely. We do not deliver content in the traditional way anymore. We do not have to explain term by term what a phoneme is or how the subject of a sentence can be identified. Rather, instead of teaching, we supervise our students' activities. We try to motivate them to do their tasks in time, and we make sure that everyone is served as well as possible. As class instructors, we now have time to do more efficient things with our students beyond mere content delivery. So in accordance with Alison King, who as early as 1993 predicted a radical change of education in the 21st century, we can now clearly claim we are no longer sage on stage but guide on the side. And what about linguistic research? Well, today, no serious linguists dispenses with digital data, corpus analysis, whether spoken or written, special software for text editing or audio analysis support our research. And last but not least, we perform experiments using the computer in many ways. Here is an example from psycholinguistics. Now lexical decision tasks, tasks where you have to decide whether something is a word or a non-word, can easily be implemented on a computer. On the Virtual Linguistics Campus, you have a large number of such experiments. This is just one of them which I can only show how it works. You will be presented a word in the center of the screen and then you have to decide whether it's a non-word or a word. This is how it works. And now you would have to click, I don't have a keyboard so I can't do it so I leave that to you. You can use the linguistic laboratory on the Virtual Linguistics Campus to find out how these experiments work in detail. So, there have been dramatic changes in linguistic education and research in recent years. But there's no reason to be desperate. Rather, we should face the new challenge. We should make use of the wealth of material that is available on the web. We should use the superb digital tools that enhance teaching, learning and research. So, the material is there. It's up for grabs. And new ideas about modern education exist too. The rest is up to you. Thanks for listening.