Using Smart Technology to Increase Course Offerings in World Languages

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Low enrollment in world language courses can prevent a college from offering a breadth of languages and depth in any single language. To help overcome this challenge, five independent colleges in Texas are using high-definition videoconferences, thereby hoping to preserve the “high touch” element that is a hallmark of education in a liberal arts college. These institutions are working with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) to explore important research and implementation issues across academic, logistical, technological, financial, and curricular dimensions. CAOs from two of the participating campuses will describe their responses to these issues and how shared programming has surmounted many obstacles to maintaining strong world language departments.

Transcript

Using Smart Technology to Increase Course Offerings in World Languages

Rebecca Frost Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities, NITLE

Allen H. Henderson, Provost and Senior Vice President, Texas Wesleyan University

Charlie McCormick, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Schreiner University

CIC Institute for Chief Academic Officers, 2012

NITLE www.nitle.org

• National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education

• NITLE helps liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology.

• Future of Liberal Education• Collaboration

Texas Language Consortium

Session Outline

• Lessons Learned from Previous Collaborations• Challenges for Teaching World Languages• Texas Language Consortium• Next Steps• Roundtable and Plenary Discussion

Shared Academics

• Sunoikisis, national consortium of Classics programs, est. 1995

• http://www.sunoikisis.org • Summer Course Planning Seminars• Intercampus Team Taught Courses– Weekly live online sessions using desktop

videoconferencing– Remaining course meetings on individual

campuses

Program Evaluation

• Three-year longitudinal study (2005)• PIs: Susan Frost, Emory University & Deborah

Olsen, Virginia Tech • How-to Resource Guide• http

://www.colleges.org/techcenter/Archives/reports.html

Looking for Whitman in . . .

• New York City College of Technology (CUNY)• New York University• University of Mary Washington in

Fredericksburg, VA• Rutgers University-Camden • University of Novi Sad (Serbia)• Gold, Matthew. “Disrupting Institutional Barriers Through Digital Humanities Pedagogy.” Diversity & Democracy 15, no. 2 (2012).

http://lookingforwhitman.org

• Personal student blogs• Aggregation via tags and news feeds

SUNY-COIL

• SUNY Center for Online International Collaborative Learning (COIL)

• http://coilcenter.purchase.edu/ • Globally Networked Learning• Faculty Guide for COIL Course Development

Find the Right Partners

• Shared challenges and goals• Complementary expertise• Individual level• Institutional level• Technology expertise

Process for Developing Collaboration

• Choosing proper content

• Exploring institutional context

• Finding & getting to know partners by communicating and comparing

• Calendars & Time Zones• Academic standards• Language ability• Technology &

instructional design support

• Content to be covered• Assessment

Logistics: Time Zones & Calendars

Typical Intercampus Course Map

Hybrid Model

Barbara Means et al. Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning : A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development Policy and Program Studies Service, September 2010. http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf.

Southwestern University Students Attend Greek Class

Student Interaction

• Hyper-connected world• Matt Gold. “Looking for Whitman: A Multi-

Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy.”Teaching Digital Humanities, ed. Brett D. Hirsch, Forthcoming.

Global Network by Flickr User WebWizzard

Fairness of Credit & Effort

• Academic credit– Each faculty teaches course on home campus– CGMA: rotate teaching over between 4

institutions over 4 years• Faculty workload– Shifts from content to collaboration in team

teaching

Where are or would you collaborate and why?

Teaching World Languages

• The World Language Opportunity

Teaching World Languages

• The World Language Opportunity

• The World Language Problem

Next Steps

• Assessment of Proof of Concept• Funding for Intentional Development• Better Promotion on Campuses• Deal with Difficult Issues– Numbers in a class– Financial Obligations

• Other Opportunities to Share Academics

Roundtables

1. What are your motivations for this type of collaboration?

2. Who might you collaborate with? What existing relationships do you already have?

3. What would be a good test area?4. What resources do you have in your

context/on your campus for this sort of collaboration?

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