The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland hosted its first-ever virtual summit, “Apart But Together: Expanding our Community,” on July 21-23. The three-day event brought together over 7,000 world language educators from all over the US and the world to participate in a variety of professional learning experiences designed to challenge current mindsets while exploring new content and gaining insights on what is possible in today’s world language classrooms.
The flexible summit schedule allowed participants to engage with each other and presenters in several ways. Over the course of the summit, participants viewed six livestreamed sessions featuring real classroom teachers; three livestreamed panels with world language students at the middle, high school, and undergraduate levels; twelve livestreamed panel discussions with presenters and other educators; 71 pre-recorded sessions; and daily evening “sunset chats” meant to debrief the day’s sessions. Participants used Google Docs for each recorded session to process their learning, share ideas and resources, and learn more from each other. The flexibility of the summit format allows viewers to return to session recordings or view additional sessions on NFLC’s YouTube channel until August 31.
“The format of the conference is a great reference to us as educators: a mix of synchronous, asynchronous, and gathering together to reflect on learning.”
Marta Silva
First impressions of the success of the Summit are exciting. Nearly 6,000 people registered to attend the event and over 7,000 individual viewers accessed the content during the three days. By the morning of July 24, one day after the conference, the NFLC’s YouTube channel boasted 1,118 new YouTube subscribers, 46,846 views and 7,492 hours of watch time for summit sessions. The NFLC anticipates these numbers to increase, as the content will be available online through the end of August.
Particularly impactful were the three live panels featuring world language students. During these panels, world language students from middle school, high school, and undergraduate levels discussed their experiences learning languages in a virtual environment during the spring and made thoughtful recommendations for improving those experiences during the fall. Summit participants appreciated the opportunity to learn from these students and their individual experiences of what worked and did not work in virtual classrooms.
As the NFLC continues to monitor viewership of summit sessions and connect with summit participants on social media, more data will emerge on how educators use the summit videos and how future events will be shaped. Participants are still submitting post-summit surveys that the NFLC research team is analyzing. The NFLC hopes that the data from survey responses will contribute to the wider world language community as it moves previously in-person conferences and other professional development events to virtual environments. In September, the NFLC will release further insightful information on the outcomes of this groundbreaking event.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of teaching and professional learning, the NFLC has effectively pivoted to meet the needs of world language teachers. This summit has set a precedent for virtual professional learning for world language teachers in the 21st century.
-Nicole Rumeau