College unveils language software

After a year of planning and negotiations, Middlebury College has publicly announced the details of its new language acquisition software. The new company, directed toward students in kindergarten through 12th grade, is called Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL).

It will be produced in conjunction with K12, a Virginia-based company that specializes in online learning. The first courses will be available late this summer in French and Spanish languages.

The College will invest $4 million in the venture, constituting a 40-percent stake in the new for-profit company.
The initial $4 million investment will be funded from the endowment, as part of the $250 million invested in private partnerships. It will not come out of the yearly operating budget, nor can it be used elsewhere, Chief Financial Officer of the College Patrick Norton clarified in an e-mail.

Norton declined to comment on the expected returns of the investment, noting that MIL is a long-term investment and likely will not be profitable for some years. Middlebury is acting as an “active investor” in the venture.

MIL is not merely — or primarily — directed toward creating a fourth revenue stream, Norton maintains.

The reasons for creating MIL are threefold, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz wrote in an e-mail. They are to maintain leadership in language education, to expand opportunities to students who do not have access to language education and to create revenue. All three are equally important, Liebowitz said.

The MIL courses will be distinct from other language acquisition software as a result of several pedagogical principles that make a Middlebury education effective, MIL collaborator and Associate Professor of Spanish Ana Martinez-Lage wrote in an e-mail.

Those principles include content-based instruction, where students learn the target language and new information through task-based instruction, which has students use the target language to complete certain tasks.

These principles are vital to successful language acquisition, Lage explains, because they require students to understand how to use a language in a variety of realistic situations, rather than memorizing words and phrases.

The MIL courses will also be distinguished by their reliance on culturally authentic videos, music and images from the locations being studied. A Spanish student, for example, could watch videos from Madrid and read texts from Buenos Aires as part of his or her learning experience.

The courses will even include 3-D virtual “worlds” where students can attempt to navigate the streets of Paris or Madrid in a manner similar to that of the popular virtual world Second Life — while interacting with other students.

Teachers will be present throughout the courses to evaluate oral and written writing assignments, as well as to interact with students in real time.

Although MIL is directed toward students already in school, existing teachers will remain vital for language acquisition.

“We never want to replace live teachers,” said Director of Institutional Collaboration and Marketing Jamie Northrup, but rather supplement where we can. Northrup noted Middlebury Union High School, which lacks an Arabic program, as a possible beneficiary of the software. MIL can offer to fill gaps in teaching there, allowing students at schools like Middlebury Union to learn languages not offered at their own “brick and mortar” school.

Some concerns remain about the effect Middlebury Interactive Languages will have on the Middlebury brand and education.
“[Middlebury is] not known for online programs, and to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool with a for-profit is, in my view, dangerous,” said Philip G. Altbach, the Monan Professor of Higher Education at Boston College, to the New York Times.

Liebowitz is wary of such comments, and continues to insist that the dangers of inaction when Middlebury seeks to reinvent its financial model are in fact greater than action.

“In order to retain one’s recognized leadership position — in this case, language pedagogy — we need to evolve with the times and not rest on our laurels,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Leadership always involves taking some risks, but they need to be intelligent risks, which I believe this is.”

Referring to Altbach’s comment, Liebowitz wrote that “[t]hose who commented so quickly about this knew little about it.”
Visiting Lecturer in Spanish Ricardo Chavez-Castaneda believes that it remains to be seen how much is lost when the Middlebury education leaves the brick-and-mortar classrooms. While he is optimistic that anything can be taught through new media, he says the disadvantages of using new media remain unclear.

Director of the Program on Education Policy and Government at Harvard University Paul Peterson is confident that given Middlebury’s excellence in language pedagogy, MIL will succeed.

“Middlebury has a superb opportunity to reach out to a much larger audience,” wrote Petrson in an e-mail, one that will likely benefit the Vermont campus as more prospective students come to learn about and respect the Middlebury name.