Beyond the Traditional Classroom: Online AP Spanish, Communication Tools

The Mediaworks project to develop an Advanced Placement Spanish Language course for the UCCP (UC College Prep) Initiative continues, with lessons in production at a number of high schools throughout California. UCCP has received interest in acquiring this course from other parts of the US and South America. Mediaworks is now designing and developing an Advanced Placement Spanish Literature course for fall 2004.

Mediaworks has also developed a suite of Communications Tools, including chat rooms, audio and text messaging, collaboration groups, and notepad and white board capabilities. This set of tools is being used in the UCCP AP Spanish, Physics, and Environmental Science courses as well as UCD University Extension's Spanish Without Walls course.

Mediaworks developers recently attended the UCCP Online Developer's Summit, a two-day technical conference involving developers from UCD, UCB, UCSC, UC Gateways, Inflection Media, Blackboard, Elluminate, and Tata. Mediaworks gave a 45-minute presentation on the learning object architecture, SCORM-compliance strategy and design, and best practices approaches used in the development of the UCCP online advanced placement courses. UCCP has plans to convert its online courses to integrate with Blackboard's course management functionality, and the Summit provided an opportunity for the organizations involved to discuss strategies and methodologies to accomplish that goal. For more information about online course support and development, see the Mediaworks Web site.