Haitian Creole courses offered through interactive video to serve as prototype for the future

By Lisa Denlinger

Valdman

IU pilot project will allow students in the Big Ten to study less commonly taught languages such as Hausa, Mongolian, Persian and Uzbek.

World-renowned for its many language programs, IU is using technology to pilot a project that may serve as a model for making courses in less commonly taught languages and other specialized fields available to students at Big Ten universities.

With support from the IU College of Arts and Sciences and Office of Distributed Education, the Creole Institute on the IU Bloomington campus is offering two semesters of Haitian Creole.

The courses are available this year to students on the Bloomington and IUPUI campuses via the Virtual Indiana Classroom (VIC) Network, IU’s interactive video network. The network uses two-way video and audio to allow students and instructors to see and hear each other.

Ben Hebblethwaite teaches the courses. He has spent time in Haiti and is fluent in Haitian Creole. Although teaching in a distance learning setting can be “a bit head spinning,” said Hebblethwaite, “it is challenging and exciting. Distance technologies make information and instruction available to a larger audience that spatial distances would otherwise thwart.”

According to Erwin Boschmann, IU associate vice president for distributed education, the Haitian Creole courses put into motion one of the innovative action items promulgated in the Strategic Plan for Distributed Education.

“Students wanting to study less commonly taught languages have often been stymied by the lack of opportunity to do so, since few universities can afford to develop and offer courses that generate small numbers of enrollments,” explained Boschmann. “The DE Strategic Plan calls for the use of such technologies as interactive video and the Internet to allow universities to pool their resources and student numbers to offer courses not previously available.

“For years, discussions have been held among Big Ten institutions about joining forces to teach courses in specialized fields,” Boschmann said. “We hope the Haitian Creole courses will serve as a prototype that will enable IU to share its academic resources.”

Albert Valdman, Rudy Professor of French and Italian, and linguistics, and director of the Creole Institute, noted that IU is uniquely positioned to offer the Haitian Creole courses. “The Creole Institute,” he explained, “is the only center in the United States equipped to deal in depth with linguistic and related educational issues in Haiti.”

The institute has developed basic materials for learning Haitian Creole. These materials, the basic course in Haitian Creole, Ann Pale Kreyňl and the Learner’s Dictionary of Haitian Creole, have been used by most Americans who want to acquire a working competence in the language.

Part of a lesson from Ann Pale Kreyňl is available on the Web at:

http://www.indiana.edu/~creole/lesson1.AIFC