Ideas for Curricular Revision in the Online Environment

As we wrap up this semester, many of us are busy planning for fall semester. In this time of curricular revision and the development of new course models, I encourage you to consider how online conversations between your students and students in your target cultures could be truly integrated into your curriculum. We often have approached TandemPlus as an add-on to whatever assignments we already have created. Sometimes we have figured out ways to substitute a Tandem conversation for another activity.

What if we considered online conversations in the target language as a central component of our courses? Or planned from the start to have online meetings with people in the target culture, who share first-hand accounts of daily life and perspectives on key content areas and also respond to student questions?

Rather than prescribing one particular model, we invite you to think creatively about how the recent shift to virtual meetings and video-conferencing opens up new possibilities for your curriculum, particularly in online courses.

You likely have concerns about how to find partners and on the reliability of those partners; those are real challenges. It takes planning and good communication to establish successful partnerships. Now is the time, however, to give it some serious thought. How could online conversations in the target language with native informants help your students achieve the learning goals in your course? We can work together to find partners, develop tasks integrated in your curriculum, and establish best practices.

Please give this some consideration and contact Beth Kautz at tandem@umn.edu with questions, ideas, or wishes!

Beth Kautz
TandemPlus Specialist