In the December 10th, 2007, issue of the New Yorker (it takes me a few months to catch up these days), Atul Gawande wrote an eye-opening piece, “The Checklist.” The article describes how the implementation of a simple medical checklist, developed by Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins Medical Center, slashed the rate of oftentimes-lethal intravenous catheter infections for patients in intensive care units in the state of Michigan. How? By including simple, no-brainer steps like “Step One: Doctors must wash their hands with soap” that doctors and hospital staff were skipping, thus causing easily preventable deaths and infections in their intensive care units.

It’s pretty mind boggling. If Dr. Pronovost could actually implement his checklist across the US (easier said than done), it would largely wipe out the multiplier effect of thousands of human error deaths from skipped steps across thousands of diagnostic and procedural combinations. The power of the Gawande article is that it underscores that some of the most basic tools are the most effective ones. The checklist is brilliant in its very simplicity, and I’m sure it can have dramatic applications across all sectors.

Though checklists of all kinds (revising, editing, homework, behavior) can be found in elementary and secondary educational settings, it is harder to find individualized, purposeful use of checklists at the higher ed level. I don’t think the need for them has necessarily diminished. Though students in the online classroom aren’t dying of infections in intensive care units, they are spending unnecessary time getting lost and confused about when and where to submit assignments and are having difficulty managing their time in the absence of face-to-face accountability in the online environment. I hear professors complain about late assignments, ignored e-mails, and work submitted that is hardly reflective of critical thinking.

I think that a greater use of individualized checklists would improve communications between instructor and student and allow students to spend more time on substantive, creative work. In the online classroom, students need specific instructions on how to submit their work and how to participate in online discussions. They need assistance and they need writing papers and guideposts for completing assignments. Instructors provide all of these instructions, but typically in an elaborate course syllabus supplemented with lengthy e-mails in addition to whatever is posted in the course itself. Too frequently, instructors’ e-mail communications to students are lengthy documents that students may barely read all the way through. Professors aren’t joking when they say: “My students don’t read the syllabus,” or, “My students don’t read my e-mail.” They probably don’t. Why not provide students a more direct, simple path to success?

Checklists are simple and direct. They filter out extraneous details and give students a priority list of items to read and do. Checklists could be provided for specific parts of the syllabus. A “Welcome Checklist” supplementing a very brief welcome note from the instructor could replace the traditional long welcome letter from the instructor that tends to contain entirely too much information. Checklists could ensure that students edit and check their papers, properly reflecting on each step. I suspect that instructors would receive an elevated quality of writing, in response to clearer and cleaner communication to students.

I think professors have been reluctant to use checklists because they involve this simplification of language, and so to some extent, instructors may feel checklists would enable students. Instructors expect students taking online courses to be able to read lengthy e-mails and take large tasks (reading and analyzing a case study; writing a paper) and automatically divide and sequence them out into a series of tasks independently.

But I think part of using checklists is adjusting to a need for an entirely simplified way of writing when communicating guidelines and expectations in an online course. We need to give over to this need for simplicity, standardization, and predictability that is not necessarily the standard way of communicating in academia. I think most instructors might be uncomfortable with embracing this format because it involves thinking and writing in a largely different way. Like most instructors, I’ve established a routine that was created before the age of e-mail and Facebook and text messaging. I grew up writing letters by hand, relishing the pure art of correspondence for its own sake. A checklist, in contrast, seems cold, and hardly feels like responsible and full communication. But I believe there is a way we can integrate checklists judiciously. You can still impart tone and personality in your email and your communications with your students, yet not lose them in a sea of verbiage.

I’ll spend the next few weeks integrating a few checklists into the design of the online class, to showcase the checklist as being an important, very low tech tool. I am purposefully keeping fancy checklist/tasklist applications out of it for the moment, though I sometimes feel I have tested out every checklist/tasklist application that exists. This is more about the mindset than the technology. It’s captivatingly simple.

It was Christmas time again. I knew a big box filled with gifts for everyone in my family would soon arrive at my door. Among them, a square-shaped object wrapped in colorful holiday paper would be a special one for me. It’s a Christmas gift from Denny Sapp, a close friend of mine who passed away seven years ago.

This year’s gift is no different. I unwrap it slowly, savoring the anticipation, and inside I find a custom photo wallet. It’s adorned with a picture of us from one of our many adventures together, a beautiful reminder of the bond we shared. As I hold the wallet in my hands, memories of Denny flood back, making me both laugh and tear up.

Also, this year as always, I put Denny’s gift—the latest version of Merriam Webster’s 365 New Words a Year calendar—next to my computer screen and once again, felt the urge to write down Denny’s story. His story touches on many aspects of teaching, learning and, most of all, living a life enriched by teaching and learning. He taught me many valuable lessons that I would like to share with you.

Denny was my student—the one who had achieved the most during his life. He had a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in architecture and a Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of Illinois. By the age of 40, he had already achieved tenure and full-professor status and was chair of the civil-engineering department at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, which was ranked the number one engineering school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

Denny was also the oldest student in my Chinese language and culture class. Seeing him, a seventy-some retired professor sitting in the first row of the class with a bunch of twenty-some youngsters, made my Chinese class very “American.” For someone of his age to tackle Chinese—which is often referred to as the most difficult language in the world for students of any age—was certainly a challenging task. But Denny was determined. He did everything possible to make himself a top student. He was always the first one to show up in class and the last to leave. He collected books, dictionaries, and tutorials beyond the required reading materials for the class. He carried his Chinese learning materials in a brief case—which he called his “Chinese brain”—everywhere he went. He even asked to meet with me after class for more instruction.

So, we started to meet for lunch every Saturday in a Chinese restaurant, where he would practice Chinese and I would bring him English-related questions that I encountered during the week. Thus, we became each other’s student and teacher. The meetings continued even after the Chinese class was over, and, as we meet more often, I realized that what I could learn from this man was beyond language. It was even more than knowledge. Many years after Denny died, I still remember vividly the life lessons I learned from him in dealing with the task of learning, in handling students and friends, and in reacting to fame and challenges. Here are just a few of my favorites:

“I think you should finish your dissertation.”

When my doctoral venture got into the ABD stage, Denny was the head of my “butt-kickers” committee. This committee was comprised of family members and friends, and it was their job to pressure me to get the dissertation done. Everyone who has been through the dreadful journey of a Ph.D. knows how easily this last swing could be dropped because of the freedom a doctor-to-be has in deciding whether or not to do it. At this point, there are no more deadlines given by anybody but yourself—unless you are as fortunate as I was to find someone who would police the process and kick butt to keep it going.

Denny was the one who did the kicking when my mind started to wander from writing my dissertation to dating and finding someone to settle down with. At the time I was well past the typical marriage age in my culture and the fear of missing the boat started to haunt me. I started to bring my concerns to our lunch table and asked Denny who I should date. He looked me in the eyes and said in a calm but firm tone, “I think you should finish your dissertation.” It was a short sentence but a big wake-up call to alert me to stay focused until the job is done. For married couples struggling with their married life, speaking to a divorce solicitors would help you make the right decision.

“Let’s learn some real English when you finish your dissertation.”

Denny was the editor-in-chief for my dissertation, the one who read the first draft of every single page of my writing. In fact, I even brought to him articles or documents I wrote for work and research. He would read them, make changes with a pencil, read them again, erase his changes, and then re-edit. When I saw him re-editing my work for the third time around, it taught me what makes a truly good writer.

One time he noticed a straightforward sentence that he had edited had been revised by my doctoral committee chair into the “dissertation-style.” He frowned and said to me, “Okay, Sharon, let’s learn some real English when you finish your dissertation.”

Real English, in Denny’s eyes, was the type of English that’s simple and direct. To help build my vocabulary, each Christmas Denny would give me a one-word-a-day Webster calendar. He also taught me that if an idea can be expressed in a simple word, I shouldn’t use complicated ones. “No gobbledeegook,” as he would say. To this day, I still have a problem writing or speaking the word “pedagogy” because Danny had once asked me, “Why don’t you just call it ‘teaching’?” And I know that he wouldn’t accept, “Because it is a popular ‘P’ word in higher education,” as an answer.

In today’s world where so many of us strive to fancy our writing with jargon and buzz words, Denny pointed out a simple fact: good writing should always be simple and direct!

“Take that doctor thing off your voice mail greeting.”

After all the pains and sufferings I had been through for my degree, I was finally crowned with the title. One thing I did to highlight the change was to revise my voice mail greeting. Like many of my professors, I put the “doctor” prefix in front of my name, upgrading what was once just “Sharon Guan’s office” to “Dr. Sharon Guan’s office.”

A couple of days later, I met Denny for lunch. He said to me in a father-to-daughter tone, “Take that off, Sharon. You don’t have to include that.” I could think of many excuses to defend myself. As an instructional designer, I thought I needed that title to gain the respect of faculty, and I wanted to point out that others had ‘Dr. so and so’ in their greetings. Yet I didn’t offer Danny any excuses. Instead, I went back to the office and re-recorded the greeting, dropping that doctor. I did this because Denny had just shown me that respect is to be earned through your actions, not your title.

“Flip nine fingers…to confuse him!”

As a licensed airplane pilot, Denny drove like a pilot. He wouldn’t speed but the starts and stops were quite sharp. It had been fun to ride in his red Miata to our lunch place until one day we bumped into a guy who was annoyed by Denny’s way of driving. This guy “saluted” us with his middle finger while driving by. I was aggravated (This was in Terre Haute, Indiana, not Chicago). I told Denny that we ought to drive up and flip a finger at him. Denny said, “Well, next time, let’s throw nine fingers…” “What’s that for?” I asked, thinking it was another American gesture that I hadn’t been acquainted with. “To confuse him!” He cheered like a little kid who had just pulled off the perfect prank. His joyful attitude toward this awful experience told me that revenge is not a solution for someone with a big heart and a great sense of humor.

“You can’t burn down that building…because my office is there!”

Denny once told me a story about a paranoid student of his who got so extremely angry with the institution that he decided he wanted to bomb one of the buildings. When he accidentally mentioned his plan to Denny, Professor Sappy gave him a simple reason to quit.

“You can’t burn down that building,” Denny said. “Why not? Because my office is there!” And then Denny started to meet the “bomber” the same way he met me, sharing books and ideas about life and discussing ways to deal with problems. The student became a lifelong friend of Denny’s and later graduated from Rose Hulman with honors. Denny shared this story with me mainly to amuse me with his funny answer, but I saw what a powerful influence a teacher can have on a student. I also realized that a teacher’s influence often goes beyond the classroom.

It had been several years since I started to meet regularly with Denny when I heard that Denny had multiple myeloma, a type of cancer somewhat like leukemia. I shook my head in disbelief. For all these years, there hadn’t been a single sign of illness in this happy and active person. But then, the signs started to show as it got into the fifth year of his battle with this fatal disease. Thankfully, he was able to get spasticity cannabis treatments to ease his pain a bit. Behind his gentle smiles, I saw tiredness and exhaustion. Yet he maintained his sense of humor, telling me proudly the best compliment he received from a Chinese friend. “When I told XiaoMao maybe I was born on the wrong planet, you know what he said to me? He said, ‘No, you were born on the wrong side of the planet!” I know that to Danny, the right side would be China, where his view of life would be highly valued by many. And that explained why so many Chinese showed up at Danny’s funeral. They were the reason for him to study Chinese at the age of seventy because he wanted to communicate with these friends in their language!

In the spring of 2001, Denny died at the Regional Hospital of Terre Haute. The last word he said was “Ni Hao ma?” or “How are you?” in Chinese. He left behind his wife Helen, elder sister Margaret, and many friends, both Chinese and American. He didn’t have children because, in his words, “There are too many people in the world already.” He hadn’t published any books because he claimed, “There are too many publications already.”

Four people were selected to speak at his memorial services. Among them, I was the only one standing at the podium without a script in hand. I started my speech with the following sentences:

“It was such a privilege to me to be among these respected university professors and administrators to deliver a speech at this very special event. Being a non-native speaker and being the most inexperienced person in the group, it must have been very brave of me to stand here without a script. Well, that is not true. I did go to my office last night trying to type something up. Yeah, Denny knows what a last-minute person I am. But last night, when I fired up my word processor, all of a sudden I realized this is going to be the first article that I wrote that wouldn’t be edited by Denny… The screen then got blurred… and I could not finish my homework any more…”

On the seventh day after Denny passed away, Panda Garden, the Chinese restaurant where Denny regularly visited was crowded with diners. People waiting at the door couldn’t figure out why there was a table in the corner set up with plates and chopsticks but not being used by anyone… This table at which Denny usually sat was reserved for him by Allen Yan, the owner of the restaurant. It was reserved for Denny because of an ancient belief among Chinese that on the seventh day, the spirit of those who died would come to visit their favorite places. And Allen knew that his friend Denny wouldn’t forget to stop by his restaurant…

It took a few hours to drive from Terre Haute, Indiana to the cemetery in Illinois where Denny was to be buried. The drive was extremely dreadful for Allen’s three-year-old son Jimmy who kept throwing up during the trip. I asked Allen why he insisted on bringing his son along knowing he would get car sick. Allen answered with his voice trembling with sadness and anger, “I want him to remember Grandpa Denny! I want him to remember who named him!” In Chinese culture, it is a privilege to name a newborn, and that privilege was given to Denny by Allen Yan’s family, new immigrants from Taiwan who survived in a small town in the Midwest because of the support of people like Denny. Denny named Allen’s son after his favorite president, Jimmy Carter.

With little Jimmy standing straight beside him, Allen took out a bag of dirt that he had brought from Taiwan and poured them onto Denny’s casket before the burying. The dirt was from the other side of the planet, and Allen said it would accompany Denny on his next journey.

When Christmas came in 2001, my family received a big box of gifts from Denny’s wife Helen and sister Margaret. Among them, I spotted a squared-shaped object wrapped in holiday paper. I knew what it was because I had been getting this gift for many years. Through glares of tears, I read the little note attached to it:

Sharon,

This is really a gift from Denny. Margaret and I had the pleasure of mailing it to you!

Love, Helen.

And the gift has continued to arrive every Christmas—so precious, like the memory of Denny.

During a recent consulting session with an instructor about her upcoming blended-delivery course, our discussion turned toward which learning activities would best serve students when delivered online vs. those that would best serve students when delivered in the classroom.

It’s an interesting question: What unique learning attributes are contained in a room that—for a period of time—contains one instructor and a group of students?

When I ask faculty what they do in the classroom, the answer I most often receive first is that they “lecture” or “talk about the content” or “present information.” When pressed further faculty refer to other activities. “I watch students to see if they are paying attention,” or “I ask questions to see if they understand the material.” And then I begin to hear yet another group of activities that includes the following:

• “We discuss the material.”
• “Students meet in their project groups and I spend time with each group.”
• “We do practice problems on the board.”
• “We review the homework assignment.”

So, here are three things that happen in a face-to-face classroom: delivery of content, assessment of student engagement with the material, and guidance of student learning and performance.

Interestingly, when I ask faculty what they like most about teaching, rarely have I ever heard lecturing top the list. In fact, I’ve never heard that answer. What I usually hear are answers related to that last task. “I enjoy guiding students through the work of learning,” or “watching students get it,” or “seeing the ‘ah-ha’ moments.” I would guess that if we asked students what they enjoy most about learning, these moments would be high on their lists as well.

What if one could actually structure a course to include more of these teaching moments—these moments of guiding student learning?

Barbara Walvoord reported on this type of course in 2003. “I wanted to use my time not to deliver information, but to engage in discussion with students and respond to their writing, encouraging their development of sophisticated analytical skills and creativity.”

To accomplish this, she basically re-created her Shakespeare class as a hybrid course. Information and ideas were delivered via readings and by videos already owned by the library. The rather large course was broken up into several groups of approximately 18 students. Each group met with the instructor once a week for an hour of discussion. Students were held accountable for their weekly short assignments, notes on readings and the video presentations, and on their participation in discussion.

Every student spoke in class every week, wrote every week, and received personalized feedback from the instructor on drafts of essays. The drop rate for this section of the class was the same as that for other sections. All measures indicated a successful and rigorous learning experience for the students.

Walvoord’s framework may have been “faculty productivity”—a term that sets an educator’s teeth on edge, much like nails across a chalkboard. Yet, her process does result in that central joy of instruction. So, what is it that the instructor can uniquely bring to the classroom? Herself? Her feedback? Her ability to guide discussion?

Well, that is actually a large part of what happens when a course is re-designed for hybrid/blended delivery. Faculty time is focused on providing immediate feedback on performance and practice, engaging students in discussions around concepts and ideas, asking guiding questions about group or individual projects, and listening and responding to student presentations.

For more information, see the following resources:

Walvoord, B. (2003). New Modes of Productivity for Student Learning. New Directions for Higher Education, No. 121. 35-49.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Computers and Advanced Technology in Education conference in Beijing, a city where I went to college 20 years ago. To me, it felt a bit strange to hear the familiar subjects—new instructional tools and pedagogical methods—being discussed in an ancient city of China, which has become so modernized that I could barely recognize it. At the conference, the clear divide between the technical and pedagogical tracks reminded me of the disparity between modern technology and the historical cultural roots of China. Almost all of the presentations delivered by Chinese scholars focused on technology, and most of the technologically focused papers seemed to shy away from any deep analysis of the pedagogical impact of these technologies. This made me wonder, ‘Where were those insightful learning theories developed in China thousands years ahead of the west? Where was Confucius and his philosophy of teaching and learning?’

An interesting thought came to my mind as I was wandering through those technology demonstrations: what if Confucius were given the opportunity to teach online? Would he be as resistant to technology as many of our conservative faculty are? Or would he be willing to use the Internet to serve his mission of perfecting human beings through education?

As someone who taught through dialogue and observation, Confucius would very likely to be skeptical about teaching online. Yet, if he were to take advantage of online technology (as many faculty are doing now), I would speculate that his way of teaching would be dramatically different from most online instructors. Since I cannot easily anticipate what Confucius would do, I would just venture to list a few things that I believe would not happen if Confucius were to teach online:

1. There would be no learning objectives.
2. There would be no learning modules.
3. There would be no “instructors” in the class, but “coaches” and “mentors”.
4. There would be no tests and exams.
5. There wouldn’t be any “course” or “courses.”
6. There wouldn’t be a green light allowing every student to study online.

Now, here are my rationales for the would-not-happens.

1. No Learning Objectives
Confucius believed that through “studying,” one proceeded to reach the stage of human excellence. In this regard, the goal of education was to cultivate and facilitate self-improvement. Such improvement, in his opinion, was personal and could only happen through individual engagement in learning. Since humans differ in nature, Confucius suggested that instructions ought to be tailored for each individual student. The Analects of Confucius recorded that once a question was asked about whether the student should immediately put into practice something he was taught. To one student who Confucius thought was particularly zealous, he recommended that the student first consult his father and older brothers. To the other student who Confucius thought lacked enthusiasm, he said yes, put it into practice right away (The Analects of Confucius).

This story makes Confucius the earliest practitioner of constructivism. One could easily infer from his thoughts and practices that he viewed the paths to achieve the ultimate learning goals as being different from one student to another. In this sense, he would oppose putting any milestones on the journey of learning because people were traveling at different routes and even their own routes might change during the process. In developing online learning, we label those milestones as “learning objectives,” which were set by the instructors and given to students as common targets that move them along “a well-trod and clearly marked road.” The main challenge of learning, in this perspective, is to keep students moving down the road on schedule. (Ron Weigel, 2005).

These milestones or learning objectives would certainly be removed by Confucius.

2. No Learning Modules
Break the content into bite-sized chunks to make it easy for students to digest! Carefully label each chunk with instructions and dates for it to be consumed! Place them in a good sequence so that they are completed by the students in the right order!

None of these design tips would have found their place if Confucius were to teach online.
Confucius, even in his own time, never used structured class to teach. Because of this, one can hardly imagine him using modules to break knowledge into discrete pieces.

Confucius saw learning as a process of observation, followed by reflection, and internalization or implementation. His thought infers a clear distinction between information acquisition and the formation of knowledge and wisdom. He would leave it to the students to observe and to acquire information without interfering and would never limit what students could “observe” by storing things in a fixed module.

3. No Instructors but “Coaches” and “Mentors”
Confucius’ methods of teaching were striking. He didn’t discourse at length (no lectures either!). Instead he posed questions, cited passages from classic texts, used apt analogies, or simply just listened and waited for the students to arrive at the right answer. He would not be there to tell students when to finish what assignment or what’s right and what’s wrong. Instead, he was to coach and mentor them on an individual basis.

4. No Tests and Exams
Confucius never use structured exams to assess the progress of student learning. Instead, he seemed to care more about how students reflected upon what they had “observed” and transformed these observations into knowledge and wisdom.

Confucius once asked a student, “Do you think that my way of acquiring knowledge is simply to study many things and remember them?” The student said, “Yes, isn’t that the case?” Confucius replied, “No, I have one principle which I use like a thread, upon which to string them all.”

His answer demonstrated his awareness of his own thinking process, which we now define as “metacognition.” Metacognitive capabilities can never to be mined through pure retrieval of information, nor would they be assessed by tests and exams.

5. No More “Courses”
Although Confucius did have a curriculum for subjects like music, speech, poetry, literature, and history, none of these was offered in isolation. Instead, he took a holistic approach by cross-referencing all subjects.

Without the boundary of walls, online learning has the great potential to enable multidisciplinary curricula, which I believe Confucius would like to use. In this regard, the concept of “a course” or “courses” would disappear.

6. Survival of the Eager and Willing
How many online instructors are struggling with keeping students on task? How many are frustrated by the fact that no matter how hard they try, there are always some that just won’t learn? Well, Confucius would not let himself be bothered by this problem because he would not teach “dullards,” and would “only teach those who were bursting with eagerness for enlightenment” (The Analects of Confucius). He would certainly apply this principle to online learning, which requires more enthusiasm and self-motivation to complete.

In reviewing Confucius theories, I see some limitations in his thinking (such as the unchallengeable acceptance of traditions). However, there are many of his ideas and practices that may still provoke useful thinking about what we do today. I think reviewing his way of teaching would at least make us aware of the overuse of the behaviorist approach in online teaching, which has a tendency to downgrade learning to one or a collection of short-term trainings.

The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) recently released its fourth annual research study on the role of technology in student life, which describes their findings of the ways college students use technology and the impact this may have on instruction. In case you don’t want to leaf through the 122-page PDF, you can read Andy Guess’s article in Inside Higher Education for an excellent analysis of the study. But the ECAR report is well worth reading. The tables and stats alone will come in handy for you to whip out at any cocktail party when the discussion turns to “these kids today”.

Researchers found that as suspected, college students are using technology like crazy.

Among the interesting statistics:

• 73% of students have laptops (although half don’t bring them to class)
• Average hours per week on the Internet: 18
• 81.6% of students use social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace
• 74.7% have music/video devices
• 85.1% use instant messaging
• 43.1 % accessed a wiki every week
• Over 70% use the Internet (including library databases) for research

This study shows that student use of communication tools such as text messaging, IM, and social networking sites has increased significantly—up 11% since the last study in 2006. Students also make frequent use of Blackboard, email, and discussion boards in their academic work. But although this generation of college students has grown up immersed in these new technologies, they are not ready to abandon real-life human interaction quite yet. Researchers found “themes of skepticism and moderation alongside enthusiasm” among the students regarding the use of technology in courses, noting that 59 percent of students preferred a “moderate rather than extensive use of IT in courses.”

One theme that emerged from the study was that many students found that “the poor use (underuse/overuse/inappropriate use) of technology by faculty detracts from the learning experience.” Complaints included time wasted trying to make equipment work, poorly facilitated discussion boards, and poorly-trained faculty. It is good to know the youth of today are discerning customers. Students won’t buy into the use of technology unless a faculty member can use it well and integrate it meaningfully into the curriculum. Students know that technology alone is no substitute for good teaching practices.

Although student opinion seems to be a bit mixed about the use of technology in the classroom, the overall message of the report is clear: the times are changing and instructors must face the reality that this generation of “digital natives” has grown up with higher expectations for the skillful use of technology and has different ways of learning and accessing information. These new technologies aren’t going away and will just evolve into a Web 3.0 and 4.0 and so on. In the introduction, Harvard professor Chris Dede summarizes the entire state of affairs in one sentence: “Our ways of thinking and knowing, teaching and learning are undergoing a sea change and what is emerging is both rich and strange.” Dede recommends that educators work towards a pedagogical model that fuses the old methods and new, but as this is a bit easier said than done.

The Inside Higher Education article posed some interesting questions regarding the report that I’ve adapted a bit: “How can educators adapt their teaching methods to these emerging technologies? And should they? How are you dealing with this “sea change” and navigating through this ocean of wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, and all things Web 2.0?

I took my first French class in 10th grade at a public school in a small Alabama town. The class was typical of most high-school foreign language courses. We spoke mostly in English and the assessments were designed to ensure that no one would fail the class. Vocabulary tests typically asked us to pair French terms in column A with their English equivalents in column B, like so:

Grammar tests were only slightly more challenging and usually consisted of simple sentences with missing verbs to conjugate, as shown below:

I often memorized the verb conjugations the night before (or in some cases, just minutes before the start of the test), then filled in blanks feverishly the minute the exam was in my hands. Speed was key, since my mental snapshot of the proper endings for each verb would begin to blur after five to ten minutes. Occasionally, we were subjected to some other form of memorization torture. This usually involved reciting poems or singing French Christmas carols.

That first year, I thought my French was formidable. (Or, as the French would say, “formidable.”) I could rattle off the French names of almost any object in the classroom. I could tell you exactly how to say I go, you go, and we go. (Saying where I, you, or we were going wasn’t always so easy.) The following year, I transferred to the Alabama School of Math and Science (ASMS), a rigorous magnet boarding school in Mobile. I had to take a French placement exam before enrolling at ASMS, and I knew I was in trouble when there wasn’t a single matching question on the test. My horrible score on the placement exam meant I had to start all over again with French I—along with nearly every other student who had taken a year (and in some cases, two years) of traditional high-school French.

On my first day of French class at ASMS, my teacher explained that our lessons would be built around French In Action, a series of videos designed to teach us French through total immersion. (“Videos” really isn’t the right word, since we viewed everything on gigantic laserdiscs.) As we watched the first few episodes, I was completely overwhelmed. I wondered what language I had been studying for the past year in my hometown, because it certainly wasn’t whatever those people on the screen were using to communicate with each other.

French In Action was part soap opera, part Sesame Street, and it wasn’t great at being either. The storylines were bland and the lesson recaps were repetitive. Yet, despite the actors’ dated haircuts, the overacting, the two-dimensional characters, and the ludicrous plot twists (or perhaps because of them), the whole class was hooked. We were so hungry for anything other than the usual verb conjugation tables and vocabulary memorization that we actually felt invested in the simple narratives. We cheered when Mireille’s bratty sister fell in a fountain in the park. We leaned forward with anticipation when it seemed Robert would finally ask Mireille on a date, and we laughed when our teacher tried to explain a new verb or noun through her own unique system of charades. She would flail her arms wildly, run around the room, improvise with props—anything to avoid a direct translation to English. The goal was to make us think in French, and that’s exactly what the class did.

I went on to major in French in undergrad and was the first student at the University of Alabama to participate in a semester-long exchange program with a French university. (There was another student who was supposed to join me for the adventure, but she went home when she discovered the dorm rooms didn’t offer private bathrooms.) After my semester in France, I decided to move to Germany to live with a few German friends I had made in France. I didn’t speak a word of German at the time.

By the time I left Germany five months later, my spoken German was nearly as good as my French. Of course, there were times when I wished I had learned a few basic grammar rules the old-fashioned way. I was forced to rely on my instincts when trying to conjugate a verb in a complex tense or pair the proper article with a masculine, feminine, or neuter noun. And I still couldn’t explain key differences in the four German cases—nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive—if my life depended on it. However, none of that stopped me from understanding and participating in lots of great conversations with my German friends or communicating with strangers at the grocery store or the pharmacy.

My experience learning German made me wonder (more than ever before) why student progress in learning a new language is still assessed through fill-in-the-blank tests and short essays. Before the days of YouTube, I could understand why an immersive approach to foreign language education was easier said than done. I can still recall how my class “oohed” and “aahed” years ago when one of my professors brought in a VHS tape with a few grainy episodes of Friends that she had recorded while in France. She clutched the precious black plastic cartridge tightly, hugging it to her chest as though she feared one of us might snatch it from her before she could insert it into the VCR. She told us that it cost over two hundred dollars to convert the tape to a North American video format, and we all shook our heads to express our disbelief and our gratitude.

Until recently, supplying students with a German episode of The Simpsons or a Japanese news broadcast required about as much planning and sacrifice as a cocaine smuggling operation. A devoted instructor might record a soap opera during a vacation abroad and carry the tape home like a priceless artifact from an archaeological dig. Once the tape was transported safely, the search would begin for the rare translator of foreign media formats—an elusive code breaker who could make the artifact accessible to the instructor’s students. Today, a wealth of foreign media is only a click away.

So, why isn’t everyone leveraging foreign-language media to create more immersive learning experiences? Some instructors might argue that, YouTube or no YouTube, good foreign language education isn’t primarily about learning enough to understand words and phrases used in popular entertainment and carry on an everyday conversation. The argument over what’s really important in language education (grammar, syntax, and spelling vs. general comprehension and diction) is nothing new. Yet, no matter which side you sympathize with, I think most instructors agree that video and audio can go a long way to promote thinking in a foreign language (as opposed to translation), reinforce key concepts, and burn words and phrases into long-term memory. This brings me to the critical, concluding question of my article, which I hope you will respond to by answering the survey below. (And feel free to provide further feedback by posting a comment.)

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