Abstract
In this contribution I focus on the structure and contents of an online course in the Italian language and culture offered through different venues and formats, i.e. as a summer SPOC (Small Private Online Course); as a blended course on our campus and at MIT, and as a MOOC on the edX platform. I present and analyze some data on students’ perception of the effectiveness of different online learning tools from a survey sent to all learners (MOOC and campus). Finally, I propose some concrete steps to advance our Italian language academic programs: these include the creation of a platform to share our best practices, evaluate our programs and assess learning outcomes.
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Notes
- 1.
This data was collected from a relatively small sample of students (33).
- 2.
Although 25,000 students were officially enrolled in the Beginner course when we sent out the survey, only about 10% of these were active in any given week; for the intermediate and advanced students, about 4,500 were enrolled in each course, but weekly activity oscillated between 6–7% amounting at around 300–350 for both courses, with a slightly higher number for the Intermediate level.
- 3.
Figure 1 doesn’t show the Podcast campus ratings because this tool was implemented relatively late, i.e. summer 2015, and was not available to campus students in Fall 2014.
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Bartalesi-Graf, D. (2017). From a Small Liberal Arts College to the World: Our Blended Courses, SPOC, and MOOCs in Italian Studies. In: Delgado Kloos, C., Jermann, P., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Seaton, D., White, S. (eds) Digital Education: Out to the World and Back to the Campus. EMOOCs 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10254. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59044-8_1
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