Possible Futures of Language Distance Education

Le future de l'enseignement des langues seconde ou étrangère ou The future of second or foreign langue teaching: A continuum of possibilities

Le blogue qui suit se veut en anglais. Ma motivation est de rejoindre le plus grand nombre d'intervenants possibles.

Being a former ESL College teacher and being a current project manager at Cégep@distance in Quebec Canada, I have had close to 20 years of reflection on the matter of innovations in language teaching and the integration of technologies in education. I am sure I am not alone imagining the future of language teaching and the future of distance education.

Through this blog, I mean to open the discussion pertaining to how all stakeholders interested in the matter, could collaborate for the benefit of all. Think about it, if teachers, students, researchers, companies, to name the obvious ones got together around a virtual table and chatted, what would they have to say? How could they collaborate? How could they avoid reinventing the wheel?

For me, there is nothing wrong with any form of education, let it be face to face or distance education... These forms of education are just the product born out of the culture, the needs of the time. With the advance of technologies, we are now I believe, in a time when everything is possible. I hope one day, students can decide what is best for them.

How can we make sure that we do not avoid being trapped in the same old stereotypes, how can we not reinvent the wheel? How can we make sure we do not promote only one form of education? How can we better serve students? How can we use technologies to improve pedagogy? How can we use instructional design principles to improve face to face education? How can we integrate face to face teachers into distance education? How can we make sure that our courses, programs are inspired from research? How can our courses and programs inspire research? How can the public sector help the private sector and vice versa?