CourseShare Fall 2025: Innovations & Challenges

A new semester is underway

This semester approximately 125 students are participating in the CourseShare program through the University of Minnesota (UMN). Unlike most semesters, there are more students from the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) taking our local language courses than there are UMN students enrolled in language courses taught by other universities. This semester brings the excitement of innovation and new connections, but also new challenges. 

Innovation 

The Language Center is piloting a new course aligned with CourseShare, a variable credit directed studies course: LGTT 3993 Directed Language Learning with Technology. This course is designed to enhance collaborative language education by addressing multiple learner groups, including:

• Students who are interested in enhancing their development of communication and cross-cultural communication skills through guided practice with native speakers;
• Students of language or language-adjacent fields with interests in language pedagogy;
• Students who have completed the current curricular options for their language and seek an additional development and professionalization experience.

This course pilot is taught by Amanda Dalola and Saena Dozier, in collaboration with language program representatives Ingela-Selda Haaland (Swedish) and Lily Obeda (Finnish). Language faculty interested in recommending a student for next semester can start by reaching out to Saena at [email protected]. 

New connection

The BTAA expanded in 2024 to include four new universities (UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington). However, those universities have not been ready to join the CourseShare program. Nevertheless, when Oregon canceled several language programs, including Swedish, and they needed an option for students at the intermediate level, Ingela-Selda Haaland agreed to share Intermediate Swedish I with six Oregon students, launching the first exchange with a West Coast university.

Challenges

Several of the classes we had planned to receive from other universities were canceled at the home institution. This disrupted the course plans of approximately 20 local students. We tried to find alternate arrangements for them, but it was not always possible to find the right course for them a second time. Some offerings in the Big Ten were unique, and not replicated elsewhere. Language course and program cancellation is a national concern, and has real impacts on students. 

Language faculty make it possible

Coordinators, registrars, technologists, advisors and more support the CourseShare program, but the most important program leaders are the language faculty who volunteer to share their course with students across the Big Ten. Because we share languages like Hebrew, Ojibwe and Urdu, UMN students can access languages like Filipino, Persian and Turkish.

We would like to thank the following language faculty, who were willing to accept the additional instructional and administrative work of the CourseShare program in order to promote their language and culture to a broader audience: Meraj Ahmed (Hindi & Urdu), Zoe Brown (Ojibwe), Hangtae Cho (Korean e-school), Ingela-Selda Haaland (Swedish), Elijah Hopkins (Dakota), Khadar Jama (Somali), Kyle Korynta (Norwegian), Lily Obeda (Finnish) and Renana Schneller (Modern Hebrew).