MODERN LANGUAGES AND DISTANCE EDUCATION: Thirteen Days in the Cloud

This research study documents the journey of two modern language faculty (Spanish and German) from their original beliefs that teaching foreign languages can only be conducted in a face-to-face format to their eventual development of an online class using Web 2.0 technologies to encourage their students’ active skills of reading and speaking in their target language. The research study shows how the instructors incorporated Web 2.0 technologies and used the Communities of Inquiry (CoI) framework to design their online class to ensure their class had the essential elements of teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence. Web 2.0 technologies used to build strong levels of CoI were BB-Collaborate web conferencing, Voki, VoiceThread, ANVILL, Fakebook, Bubble,us, Mindmapping, Flashcard Exchange, Glogster, Zunal, and Weebly.