UND offers Norwegian 101 online for first time

Growth! The word handily sums up assistant professor and program coordinator Melissa Gjellstad’s goals for the UND Norwegian Program.

Gjellstad, a Velva, N.D., native who finished her Ph.D. in Norwegian at the University of Washington in 2004, has been a dynamic member of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures’ teaching staff since 2008.

Now Gjellstad is giving the Norwegian program at UND a big boost: as of January 2011, the program’s introductory course-Norwegian 101-is going online.

“We are going to be moving our class online so that we can reach a wider population,” said Gjellstad, who also studied Norwegian language, culture, and literature in Norway.

UND is one of the few schools in the upper Midwest that offers studies in Norwegian, Gjellstad said. “By moving it online, it will attract people that do not live in the area or are unable to attend a daily language class,” she said.

The online course will use a textbook specifically developed to further the learning process for American learners.

Getting Norwegian 101 online has long been one of Gjellstad’s goals for the program. ” Our Spanish Program has been doing this for a long time-why not Norwegian as well?” she said.

There are several challenges when it comes to delivering an introductory language class online. However, Gjellstad explained, as long as the technology is right students should have the same platform for learning as students in a traditional classroom environment.

“They should have the same amount of interaction through the use of technology” Gjellstad said. “There will be group work and reading and listening exercises. Nearly everything that’s being done in the classroom we are going to do online.”

— Kristin Bentdal-Larsen, writer, University Relations