Creating an Online Language Workshop
How to Create Your Own Online Workshop
The resources here were compiled to guide a two week workshop for instructors of world languages. Creating your own workshop experience amongst colleagues is highly encouraged as you will likely generate useful ideas for how to shift your teaching online as you interact and share ideas with each other. We recommend that you move through the sections in the order that they appear. Go at the pace that makes sense for your group.
We conducted this workshop over a two week period and covered two sections per week. We held discussions over zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays intentionally so that workshop participants had ample time to reflect, as well as play with the technology and resources that we introduce throughout the sections. Scale the resources to your setting.
Our target audience was high school teachers as well as college and university instructors, however there may be resources here that apply to elementary instructors and middle school teachers. You know best what will work and what won’t given the setting that you are in.
Look for the “for your own workshop” prompts throughout the sections.
Some general recommendations:
- Identify a facilitator or facilitators. This person/people should be tasked with moving the discussions along and managing any of the logistical components of your workshop, like setting up online meetings and breakout rooms for small group discussions.
- Engage with the content of each section one at a time and individually. Use the time on your own to reflect on your own teaching practice.
- Reserve group discussions to share your reflections, engage in the discussion prompts and make plans for how to use these tools as a team and be supportive of each other.
- Keep your online meetings to an hour or less. Meeting and discussing online is exhausting. Be aware of that and plan to stop meeting once you hit the one hour mark, be explicit about this with participants and follow through on limiting your time online.
- Break out sessions/small groups work best with a minimum of three participants and a maximum of four.
- Approach these resources like a road map. If you stop somewhere because it’s really interesting and want to spend more time there, that’s ok. Just make sure to communicate that with your colleagues so that you can discuss and assess when you plan to continue on to the next stop.
- Trust your creativity, share your insights and have fun.
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