This summer, Mississippi State University’s Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures will offer distance education classes that MSU students can take online for the first time.
    Students will be able to knock out both Spanish and French classes online, all the way up to Spanish and French III, from the comfort of his or her home regardless if they live in Starkville, Mississippi, or Nova Scotia, Canada. 
    Lynn Holt, professor and interim department head for classical and modern languages and literature,  said the plan is to eventually offer classes in all of the languages currently offered by MSU.
    “I think there is an untapped demand out there,” Holt said. “Students who would like to stay home over the summer but would also like to take classes. This allows them to take MSU classes over the summer and still be home.”
    Holt said over ten instructors will teach the online classes, and Amie Russell, undergraduate coordinator for the department and spanish instructor, said the online program will hold unique opportunities. 
    “We are all familiar with using technology in the classroom, but using technology as the classroom is a whole new territory for us,” Russell said. 
    Holt said instructors at MSU teach his or her classes through immersion, and the biggest goal of the online program is to successfully mimic that level of interaction in a virtual classroom. 
    “In the past, the largest obstacle was how to engage in steady conversation in the language with the students,” Holt said. “The technology to do this has been out there for about a decade, it is a matter of us catching up to the technology. I think it is a matter of academics  really seeing the potential, particularly in the Humanities where class discussion is so important.”
    Russell said because language classes are spread throughout campus, teachers have not been able to utilize all of the technology at their disposal because not all of the classrooms are equipped to support using online materials that generally accompany most modern textbooks.  
    “I do not think there are any true disadvantages to taking our courses online,” Russell said. “They will be taught by the same faculty that teach our face-to-face courses on campus, so there is still that sense of identity with MSU.  We are using the same textbooks as the courses taught on campus, and each level of language online will cover the same amount of material as the courses on campus.” 
    Both Holt and Russell said that Kris King and the Center for Teaching and Learning were instrumental in forming the online catalogue.
   “Very few of the people teaching have had any experience teaching online,” Holt said. “Kris King at the Center for Teaching and Learning put on two workshops just for our faculty to run them through the basics of online education.”
    Holt said while several universities already offer online classes for foreign languages,  excluding a few, most are community colleges and only offer the first two levels of languages. MSU’s program will go from being non-existent to being one of the more extensive programs available to students.
    “Go big or go home, right?” Holt said. “We weren’t going to just wade in and test the waters and we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel so why not?”