Building on the success of its online Modern Greek program at tertiary level, Flinders University is moving to develop learning modules suitable for language students in South Australian primary and secondary schools.
Professor Michael Tsianikas, director of Flinders University’s LOGOS Australian Centre for Hellenic Language and Culture, said LOGOS is seeking funding to support the initiative, which could eventually be extended to schools nationally.
The plans gained momentum with the recent visit to Flinders by Associate Professors Aspasia Hatzidakis and Giannis Spandidakis from the Centre of Migration and Intercultural Studies at the University of Crete, which is a pioneer of online Greek language teaching.
The two academics presented a well-attended seminar at Flinders highlighting a new electronic learning environment for the study of Modern Greek funded by the European Union that allows students and teachers to engage in interactive and multimodal learning tasks promoting language learning.
This effort gives teachers and students the opportunity to become part of a community of learning through global learning networks and to use what they have learned in creative ways, said Professor Tsianikas, who went on to state that the ongoing collaboration between LOGOS and the University of Crete aims to create a cohesive progression of Modern Greek language and culture learning for all levels of study from junior primary to tertiary levels.
“In designing online courses for Australian schools, we need to consider local curriculum and assessment requirements, and we would also want to give the learning immediacy by adapting materials to the Australian cultural context,” Professor Tsianikas said.
“We have evidence of a strong demand for such a program, and plans for an online course have been greeted with enthusiasm by language teachers in South Australia and beyond.”
The director of LOGOS said the schools program would build on Flinders’ leading role as a an online language provider: the tertiary program in Modern Greek is now available at Charles Darwin and Griffith universities as well as South Australia’s three universities, and also to anyone else interested in studying
Greek online, nationally and internationally.
“This is the best national solution for Modern Greek – and other languages – in order to make languages available to everybody, everywhere and at any given time,” he stated.