A conference in the nation’s capital informed participants of the future of distance learning of less commonly taught languages at MSU and other universities.
The Distance Learning of the Less Commonly Taught Languages Conference held last weekend drew more than 150 people, including faculty and students from various universities.
The focus of the conference was to view examples of innovative distance learning programs and discuss them with their developers, as well as to develop the teaching of less commonly taught languages.
Less commonly taught languages include all world languages except English, French, German and Spanish.
Margo Glew, coordinator of MSU’s Program of Less Commonly Taught Languages, attended the conference.
“It’s important to make plans, to work together and collaborate on planning to develop some new courses,” she said.
Glew said the number of people with experience and the desire to expand distance learning options made the conference a success.
“When we had a chance to look at courses and materials that others around the country were developing, I think it inspired positive thinking about what can be done on their own home campuses,” she said.
Glew is working to design a second-year Portuguese language course for distance learning that will be available to all Big Ten schools and possibly others. She said there are many languages which are not commonly taught, but are widely spoken, such as Chinese. Latin is the only distance learning program of the less commonly taught languages available through MSU.
Although Glew said ideally every language would be taught at all higher education institutions, she can’t picture it happening.
“No institution can be ready to teach them all so we need to think about the priorities of our region and our country,” she said.
“If we were to offer only languages which we had large enrollments in, we would not have many choices.
“I think people are becoming aware of how vulnerable we are as Americans because we don’t have knowledge of a variety of languages. People are beginning to think seriously about this and realizing that we are having a language crisis.”
Classics Professor Blake Tyrrell, created a distance learning program of Latin. The program is taught through MSU’s Virtual University.
“I thought it was a wonderful medium for bringing Latin to people who were in high school, mostly who didn’t have opportunity to take it due to finances,” he said. “This is an avenue that I suggested to my department that they could treat Spanish and French that way. I think it can be taught well through the Virtual University but on the other hand, it does take a motivated student to succeed in any language, especially with distance learning.”
Jane Ozanich, associate director of the Center for Language Education and Research, said the center assisted in the conference by lending computer support.
She said she thinks the most important less commonly taught languages to learn now are Middle Eastern, Chinese, Japanese and African languages.
“I think obviously Arabic language is an up and coming,” she said. “That is a buzzword in Washington, D.C.”
Ben Wheeler-Harsh, a music composition freshman, said he would consider taking a less commonly taught language course through distance learning.
“I think if I was considering going somewhere where I’d need one of those languages, that would be a good way to learn it,” he said. “Especially since the resources to learn some of those things just don’t exist at a lot of universities.”
