Thoughts on CMC
I really like the idea of interclass connections. This is a simple idea that costs nothing, and could provide valuable benefits to all involved. We do provide peer tutoring at my home institution, but one has to physically go to the tutors, and the stigma is there that deficient work needs remediation. Even forcing students to go does not always ensure they will. But if one were to build in the peer editing as part and parcel of the courses, there is no stigma attached.
As far as the telecollaboration or tandem learning, I previously thought that this sort of connection would only work at the high school level, where you have an entire academic year to work on a project. I see now that short term projects can easily be built into undergrad level courses.
We just revamped our lower level language courses, removing the requirements that at X level, chapters Y - Z necessarily had to be covered. Instead, we have prepared learning outcomes for each course, through elementary and intermediate levels. For Spanish, we discussed adding outcomes that would require students to use the language in settings outside of the classroom - ATMs, interactions with native speakers of the language, etc. Our concern was how to find similar situations for languages that are not as readily available in our own neighborhood. Telecollaboration and tandem learning provide that option!
The question looming now is a big one…. where to find the time to integrate all these great ideas into our curriculum? This is great stuff!
