ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses moving less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) online in the Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas (KU). The Russian pipeline grant project provided a unique curricular opportunity through innovation in online education to Kansas high school students, many of them in rural districts. Fifty students from all over the state of Kansas were originally enrolled in a KU-designed online Russian course. This chapter discusses challenges related to the retention of these students and the creation of a teaching module with primarily asynchronous content and an added synchronous conversational component.
Since core challenges with LCTL enrollments include access and the limited ability of students to begin studying these languages early, this chapter proposes one way to help improve enrollments by sharing LCTLs with high school districts. This type of broader sharing can help create learning pipelines for many languages that students would not otherwise have any exposure to and help foster interest in the language and culture.
