ABSTRACT
An internet-based course on public sector interpreting was developed and tested by the authors for the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration in 2004. A mixed-gender group of 116 students (the majority of whom were immigrants) attended the online course, in which 13 working languages (including Norwegian as the common denominator) were represented. Drawing on this experience, the authors critically discuss both the advantages and the challenges of taking the interpreting student into the cyber-classroom, and illustrate that interpreting competencies and subject-specific knowledge can be successfully acquired in cyberspace. The pedagogical approach is inspired by experiential learning theory (Kolb 1984, cf. Boyatzis et al. 1995). Taking the importance of interpreter training as a starting point and using examples from the cyber-learning environment created for the course, the authors demonstrate the applicability of this pedagogical approach to the instruction of interpreters in general and its relevance in the context of an online-based approach in particular.
