Overview
The project, “Sharing the Bounty” is a faculty collaboration between Professors James Laine and Arjun Guneratne at Macalester College and Professor Sungok Hong at the University of Minnesota, funded by the ACM (Associated Colleges in the Midwest)’s EMKE (Enhancing the Midwest Knowledge Ecosystem) project, which is supported by the Mellon Foundation.
This project has two components:
1. The project would create language sharing that benefits students at the ACM and CIC institutions in the Midwest, where Hindi/Urdu language courses are not offered. Online distance education could offer students the opportunity to study languages to which they might not otherwise have access.
2. The second goal would be to develop suitable materials for a Hindi book at the intermediate level. There is a dearth of language teaching materials at the intermediate level, especially those consistent with the current pedagogy.
The first aspect of the project was getting the infrastructure ready, which would enable operation of online courses between U of M and Macalester. Spring of 2016 was spent laying the foundation for online language courses, and the first online class was offered in the fall of 2016 for students at the University of Minnesota and Macalester. The second semester of Beginning Hindi-Urdu is being offered in the spring of 2017. This project could be replicated at other ACM and CIC institutions to include other less frequently taught South Asian languages.