Ukrainian 20 and 30 Online Credit Course Development

Nadia Prokopchuk, Ukrainian Education Consultant, Ministry of Education

The third year of online course development has been extremely busy, but very rewarding for the team of writers, web designers, teachers and students who have been involved in the production and piloting of e-mova: Core Ukrainian 20 Online. The Ministry of Education and the Saskatchewan Teachers of Ukrainian (STU) are very grateful to the Saskatchewan Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Shevchenko Foundation for their financial assistance and ongoing support of this three-year online language initiative.

The Core Ukrainian 20 online course was piloted successfully at Mohyla Institute during the summer of 2007. The course continues to be piloted throughout the 2007-2008 school year in the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School and at Bethlehem High School. The final copy of the course will be available on the Saskatchewan Ukrainian Education Portal in June of 2008.

The Grade 12 course e-mova: Core Ukrainian 30 Online is being written during the 2007-2008 school year and will also be available in the fall of 2008 in its final form. (This course will not have the one-year pilot phase.) The development of all three Ukrainian language credit courses for high school students will be completed by September 2008. This is quite an accomplishment! We are the only province to have online Ukrainian language courses available to students for credit. We are also very proud to be able to share these courses universally through our Ukrainian Education Portal at www.spiritsd.ca/ukrainian.

To date, the Shevchenko Foundation has generously donated funds toward the development of all three levels of online course development. The UCC- SPC has provided financial assistance for the printing of pilot copies of course materials for Core Ukrainian 10 and 20. Final copies are printed through the Ministry of Education.

There may be a question about the need for electronic courses to be available in print form. It is recommended that students and teachers have access to the printed version of each course, together with a CD-ROM of the interactive components. This allows students to have the option of completing assignments in handwritten form, and retaining course materials for reference purposes.