University of Hawaii
Advanced Chinese via the Web
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII TO OFFER ADVANCED CHINESE AND KOREAN COURSES NATIONWIDE VIA THE WORLD WIDE WEB
New courses in Chinese and Korean language at the third-year level will be offered by the University of Hawaii in Fall 2000 to institutions nationwide via the World Wide Web. Universities and colleges in need of third-year Chinese and Korean language education resources will contract with the University of Hawaii to receive Web-based, asynchronous instruction for their students in Chinese and Korean language courses featuring various skill emphases. The students will pay tuition to, and receive credit from, their home institution; the home institution will in turn pay a course delivery fee to UH. Currently, one Web-based course, CHN 399a, is running at the University of Hawaii. The course is very successful; fourteen students have formed themselves into a lively on-line community and are cooperating in the completion of a series of rigorous learning activities week by week. The activities are a mix of on-line interaction (including interaction with and feedback from the instructors), on-line independent learning activities, and off-line independent assignments using a CD-ROM for advanced study which was developed previously at the University of Hawaii.
A "dummy" version of the current course, requiring no password, may be found at <http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/yuedu/>. The "Introduction" and "Contents" sections visible at this URL will yield an idea of the activities that make up the course. Please be aware, however, that this version is an empty shell, containing none of the interactions that are the heart of the course. Chinese pages are in Big5 encoding. The courses on offer for Fall 2000 are:
- CHN 399a Chinese Advanced Reading and Writing (CD-ROM features authentic texts)
- CHN 399b Chinese Advanced Listening, Reading and Writing (CD-ROM features videologue)
- KOR 399a Korean Advanced Reading and Writing (CD-ROM features authentic texts)
The courses all follow the same instructional model, but each is based on a different series of CD- ROM lessons. The course format of study with the CD-ROM is expanded in the final weeks of the course to a language-exchange format involving colleagues in Taiwan: both sides of the exchange perform identical tasks in the other side's language, and then trade feedback.
For more information, including institutional contacts, point your browser to <http://www.LLL.hawaii.edu/nflrc/399info.html>.