歡迎來到新的學期! Or “welcome to the new semester!” Language Learning is a cornerstone of creating a global learning community and well-rounded graduates. It’s more than just some party trick that you can pull out of your pocket at anytime you want. Want to travel to Germany and find the best beer garden? Prost! Does your job require you to be able to collaborate with teams internationally? Covered. Or do you want to be able to understand your favorite music genre and shows? Fun! Language learning ties all of these together and makes them possible. At the University of Florida, we offer a lot of different languages for students to learn, but from an instructional design perspective, we realized we don’t see many of these courses come through the development pipeline. So, we wanted to pull back the curtain a bit and show how we’ve planned our outreach and support efforts specifically for language learning courses.

Our Approach

In UFIT Center for Instructional Technology and Training, our instructional designers have specific passion projects and interests ranging from accessible course design to flipped advising and more. This range is the result of us all having various career paths and expertise that inform teaching and learning. Part of my background is in ESOL/bilingual education, so language learning is something I love and want to impact at the University of Florida. Already having a background in second language acquisition, I launched our approach to outreach and research on language learning and I’m leading how we can support these courses and instructors. I’m carving out time to stay relevant in new technology and strategies that enhance how we teach and learn languages and would be happy to consult on any questions you may have in this area.

Helping Faculty

After brushing up on background information, I wanted to talk to departments at UF to hone in on their specific needs and goals. Since this outreach is still happening and will be a process that is also iterative, I first reached out to department chairs to talk with them. Over the last several months, we have reached out to several language learning or adjacent departments to try to figure out how we can help support their teaching missions. We’ve learned a lot about where different departments are currently. Whether that’s the goal of moving to teach hybrid classes with some days or needing more information on how different technologies can be used to help facilitate teaching and learning. Through these discussions with different departments, we are moving onto our next phase of this outreach: meeting with faculty and gaining insight into more specific needs (rather than wanting to know more about our services as a whole). If you are interested in being a part of this, please submit a request assistance form to connect with me; mention in the comments that you are interested in discussing teaching languages and would like to connect with Stephanie Richardson.

So, why discuss this project in a bulletin? Sometimes it’s nice to be able to talk a bit about what we’re doing behind the scenes to see if someone else on campus is interested and wants to be included in those conversations. Also, it shows that every department has goals that it’s trying to reach and these goals may be more universal to other department’s than we realize. Sometimes it takes finding a hole it your own services to better help others. Please reach out using our request assistance form if you would like to learn more.

Credit: Adobe Stock Image

Tags:  Active Learning, Canvas, Curriculum, Instructional Design