A project to create a course focused on creating a constructed language or “conlang” was devised by UAF Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology Robin Shoaps as part of the Chancellor’s Innovation in Technology and E-Learning program (CITE). Dr. Shoaps wanted to streamline the collaborative construction of language design, and found Google Sheets lacking in its ability to create linked records and display information. We researched options and chose Airtable as the method for student contributions to the large (1,137 lexical items) language database.
The project also involved creating an entirely new font from scratch to represent the writing system created by the class.
A video (which I also shot and produced) of Dr. Shoaps describing the project sheds a bit more light on the nature of the effort: