Welcome to the Collaborative Language Program!
The UW System Collaborative Language Program (CLP) was established in January of 1998 to provide critical language instruction to university campuses otherwise unable to support these offerings. It is a grant-funded program to spread the wealth of language instruction to adult learners . CLP meets three primary objectives:
- Creating collaborative programs is of great interest to all UW institutions.
- Technology for distance learning is now pedagogically sound and functionally feasible to support collaborative language instruction.
- There is a clear need to focus on strategically important critical languages, primarily Arabic, Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, and Russian.
While the initial focus of the program is on collaborative programming for the less commonly taught languages, the long-term goal is to look at collaborative efforts to provide support for the teaching of all languages and area studies .
Seeking Additional Partnerships
Interested in diversifying your language department? Want to offer additional opportunities to your students beyond what your current institution can afford?
CLP serves approximately 300 students per semester and works collaboratively with several higher education institutions within and beyond Wisconsin. We are continually seeking additional partnerships to further expand opportunities to today's learners. Our partnerships are institutional (not individual) as our courses require students to attend class sessions over a classroom-based interactive two-way videoconferencing system. For more information on partnering with us, contact the CLP program director.
Download our Brochure in a PDF document.
Instructional Model
CLP uses a blended model of learning that combines classroom-based interactive two-way videoconferencing (ITV) and today's emerging technology tools. Courses are taught 3-4 days per week in a traditional classroom setting that has been modified for ITV. Through the use of this technology, UW Faculty work closely with students locally and on receiving campuses. Native speaking facilitators aid students at receive sites. In addition to attending class sessions, facilitators hold regular office hours. The use of facilitators helps ensure the success of our program on receiving campuses.
Our blended (hybrid) learning environment integrates a variety of other Internet-based technologies as well. We use a web-based course management system to provide structure and tools such as blogs, wikis, voice technology and webcams for further developing language proficiency.
Data since our program's inception maintain the following:
- CLP courses average over 70% retention from semester to semester, higher than the national average for these languages.
- Students at the receive site do as well or better than their peers at the origination site.
- Students in our distance courses are doing as well as students taking a comparable course in a non-distance class setting.
- CLP has grown from serving 98 students in 7 courses to serving over 300 students in 15 courses per semester.
Majors, Minors, & Certificate programs on campuses throughout the UW System
Curious what majors, minors and certificate programs are offered in the UW System that require language study, particularly those languages offered by CLP? Chart by campus in progress...
Primary locations where CLP Languages are Spoken
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For further information or if you are interested in participating in our program, contact the program director, Lauren Rosen, lrosen@wisc.edu.
