Redesign of a beginning Spanish program allowed for an enrollment increase of 85%, lowered cost per student by 29%, and provided a 9% pay raise to the course instructors. Class sizes were reduced from 30 students per section to 25 per section and seat time was reduced from 200 minutes per week to 130 per week. In‐class instruction was supplemented with automated, online homework exercises and computer‐mediated communication (CMC). The online components were distributed through a WebCT course Web site. Implementation occurred over a period of 2 years. This study examines whether the redesigned program was able to maintain student learning outcomes. The resulting student retention rates, successful course completion rates, and scores on the Brigham Young University Web‐based Computerized Adaptive Placement Exam (BYU WebCAPE) were comparable to those of prior instruction, but the redesign had questionable effects on proficiency.

The goal of this shared task was to predict attrition in a MOOC through use of the data and logs generated by the course. Our approach to the task reinforces the idea that the process of gathering and structuring the data is more important (and more time consuming) than the predictive model itself. The result of the analysis was that a subset of 15 different data features did a sufficiently good job at predicting whether or not a student would exhibit any activity in the following week.

Language production of Spanish students using synchronous CMC (chat) during class time was compared with that of students meeting outside of class. The study included about 100 participants enrolled in 10 sections of a first-quarter Spanish course at a US university. Students in the control group spent 30 minutes of their weekly class time in computer labs completing a chat room assignment. Students in the experimental group planned their own schedules for meeting 30 minutes each week, outside of class time, in chat rooms. Transcripts of the chat sessions were analyzed for duration, turns, words, vocabulary, socially appropriate comments, and comments off task. Production was greater when students met with their own work groups outside of class. The implication of the study is that greater student collaboration and responsibility result in greater production while conserving class time and technology resources.

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The authors reflect on their experiences hosting a literary contest for Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) at a major university in the Pacific Northwest. The contest is described and recommendations are offered for those seeking to host such a competition. The goal of this paper is to underscore the potential of SHL creative writing competitions to empower students and their communities, to foster student retention and success, and to promote SHL program growth.