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.

1. 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

2. 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

3. Texas Language Consortium

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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).

8. http://lookingforwhitman.org
• Personal student blogs
• Aggregation via tags and news feeds

9. SUNY-COIL
• SUNY Center for Online International
Collaborative Learning (COIL)
• http://coilcenter.purchase.edu/
• Globally Networked Learning
• Faculty Guide for COIL Course Development

10. Find the Right Partners
• Shared challenges and goals
• Complementary expertise
• Individual level
• Institutional level
• Technology expertise

11. Process for Developing Collaboration
• Choosing proper • Calendars & Time Zones
content • Academic standards
• Exploring institutional • Language ability
context • Technology &
• Finding & getting to instructional design
know partners by support
communicating and • Content to be covered
comparing
• Assessment

12. Logistics: Time Zones & Calendars
Typical Intercampus Course Map

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Where are or would you
collaborate and why?

17. Teaching World Languages
• The World Language Opportunity

18. Teaching World Languages
• The World Language Opportunity
• The World Language Problem

20. 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

21. 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?