Striking a Balance in Remote Language Teaching and Learning

You’re invited to the first Spring 2021 session of the Language Collaboratory, a partnership for the advancement of intercollegiate dialogue on the teaching of languages and cultures, driven by language centers and institutes at the University of Minnesota, as well as the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recordings of past sessions can be found on the Language Collaboratory YouTube channel.

The main theme of Spring 2021 is Striking a Balance in Remote Language Teaching and Learning: Promoting Instructor and Student Well-Being. The Language Collaboratory’s spring series aims at furthering conversations that help uncover the complexities of striking a balance between the professional, academic, and personal goals to achieve the well-being of instructors and students of languages. What are the major challenges in promoting our own and our students’ well-being in the context of remote instruction and the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic? As language instructors, what concrete steps might we take to better care for ourselves and our students?

Individual sessions in the series will address topics such as:

• Work-life balance
• Issues of equity in access to technology or to functional spaces to teach and to learn
• Balancing academic rigor with flexibility in language courses
• Balancing ethical considerations with compassionate approaches to assessment
• Facilitating meaningful interactions in remote language courses and in co-curricular programming
• New models for student (dis)engagement

Sessions will be held weekly from February 4 to April 30, 2021 on Mondays or Thursdays at 3:30 pm Central / 4:30 pm Eastern. Sessions are 30 minutes long with additional 15 minutes of optional discussion for those who are interested.

Spring Networking Session: Strategies to Prevent Teaching Burnout

Thursday, February 4, 2021
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Register Online

The Language Collaboratory’s Spring Series aims at furthering conversations that help uncover the complexities of striking a balance among professional, academic, and personal goals to achieve the well-being of instructors and students of languages. This session provides an opportunity to meet others and to discuss practical implications of implementing the strategies proposed in the Chronicle of Higher Education article Eight Strategies to Prevent Teaching Burnout. The session will be interactive and participants will be invited to share other strategies and explore the viability of implementing these strategies.

Discussants: Dan Soneson, Ph.D., and Adolfo Carrillo Cabello, Ph.D., Language Center, University of Minnesota