Beginning this May, students will be able to take the FLS 201-601 Business Spanish course online, along with the currently offered FLS 101 and FLS 102 online courses. The online courses will also have several new components.
Dudley Marchi, associate department head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, said that while the FLS 201 Business Spanish online course is restricted to College of Management students, the FLS 101 and FLS 102 online classes fulfill the same foreign language requirements as on-campus Spanish classes.
According to Louise Dolan, professor of the FLS 201 Business Spanish online course, the new addition added to the Internet classes will teach the same grammar and vocabulary as the classroom version of the FLS 201 Business Spanish course, which is based on the FLS 201-601 material but related to an aspect of business.
“For instance, students will learn how to introduce yourself in a professional way, business interviews, taking a business trip, about marketing, and also about banking and finance,” Dolan said.
Dolan is using several different methods in the creation of this online course, such as recording exercises using the voice of Ana Gray, a visiting lecturer in foreign languages and literatures and native Spanish speaker.
According to Dolan, the recording includes “about a page and a half of text that opens up the chapter with a fictitious professora … named Professora Lopez, and she introduces the new topic in each chapter to the students.”
The purpose of creating this recording, Dolan said, was to slow down the pace of the language presented to students for them to better understand Spanish.
“What we are trying to do is present 201 level vocabulary that is written appropriately for the 201 level, and we do not speak fast,” Dolan said. “We don’t want an exaggerated sound either, but we do definitely slow it down so the 201 student can understand what our imaginary professora is saying.
Jordan Joyner, a sophomore in zoology, said she feels that online students will benefit from this slowed down recording based on her experiences with the programs used in the classroom setting FLS 201-601.
“The other people talk way too fast in the current programs,” Joyner said.
Dolan agreed, and while she said she has no problems with any of the audio components of the current Plazas program used, she said her students complain that itÕs just too fast.
“We’re trying to accommodate that need in the online course by slowing down the online components that accompany the online course,” Dolan said.
Along with recording the audio components for the online course, Dolan is also filming her current FLS 201 Business Spanish course to accompany with the future Internet class.
“These will be connected to the online course so they can watch them or not,” Dolan said. “You don’t have to sit for 50 minutes in the classroom, but you can hear me and you can see what we’re doing.”
Finally, Dolan said she will be using a new program called Elluminate, used by Karen Tharrington, professor of the FLS 102 online class. According to Dolan, the program allows students to communicate simultaneously with the professor to have conversations and receive the one-on-one attention they would receive in the classroom.
“We will have both virtual office hours and scheduled oral assessments where the student will log on at the specified time and practice speaking with us,” Dolan said. “We’re using this because I want to be able to talk to my students. I don’t want to lose that classroom element completely.”
Dolan said she decided to use add these components, such as the recording of Gray, one year ago, when she found out the text she was using for the current FLS 201-601 Business Spanish course was going out of print. She decided to write her own.
“This way we can cater the course to exactly what we’re doing with our regular 201 Plaza students,” Dolan said.
According to Dolan, the University intends to create an FLS 201 course online as well, after seeing how this course runs.
“The business course will launch its pilot for summer session, and then in fall weÕll run it with 35 students,” Dolan said. “By then we hope we’ll have all the bugs out of it … and once we feel that’s the case and itÕs running good then I will begin to put the regular 201 course together.”
While Dolan said she does intend to create an FLS 201 online course, she says she has no plans to record the exercises for the classroom version of FLS 201, which she teaches.
“Unfortunately, all the materials have already been developed for the Plazas books the way that [the publisher] wants them to be,” Dolan said. “But many, many, many students complain to me all the time that the labs and all of the audio stuff is way too fast, and they canÕt understand it.”
Joyner said she wishes that the exercises would be recorded slower for her Spanish course.
“I have a tutor and everything else, so I would definitely use it,” Joyner said.
Dolan said that while these materials offered to the online students will make the course easier to take, she thinks that taking a language course online is harder than learning it in the classroom.
“It requires great motivation on the part of the student to do the work, to do the practice on their own, and to listen to the audio segments that we do give them to get the practice that they need,” Dolan said.
Sara Falardeau, a sophomore in English, agreed that while having the ability to speak to professors with the Ellumination program will make taking an online class easier, it will not be as beneficial as taking the course in a traditional setting.
“It would be more beneficial to have more online material, rather than a course entirely online,” Falardeau said.
Dolan said that while it may be better to take a language course in the traditional classroom setting, there is a strong push within the University to move toward offering courses online because of the expected growth rate of the University and the fact that it is very difficult to get a Spanish class at a convenient time.
“It’s not that there arenÕt enough professors … the classrooms are full and there simply aren’t any more spaces left,Ó Dolan said. “So we have to go online to handle these large courses.”
