Daily Database: Course Offerings for Less Commonly Taught Languages
I was talking with Ambrosia the other day when she mentioned that every time she talks to me, she learns about a cool new database or web resource. It occurred to me that I really am aware of a surprising number of such resources, or of unique ways of searching old ones, so I thought I’d share some of them with the masses.
What it is: The University of Minnesota’s LCTL Course Offerings database is a list of courses offered in over 300 languages at over 2,000 North American universities. (For purposes of this list, a “less commonly taught language” is anything besides modern English, French, German, or Spanish.)
How to use it: I’ve used the database to answer a Board question about how many North American universities offer Arabic, to find distance education courses in Swedish, and to feel smug that BYU is one of only 9 American universities to offer modern Welsh.
You could also use the database to find all of the course offerings at a particular institution, to narrow down grad school choices by the languages offered, or to look for study abroad programs which offer a specific language.
Pros and cons: This database relies on submissions and updates from the institutes that offer these courses, which means that the links and information about current course offerings are frequently out of date. However, I haven’t found any other database which contains this information, and I’ve used it on everything from grant proposals to just browsing and daydreaming.
1 Comments:
Hurrah! Thanks for linking it here. Now I won't have to dig through the Board to get to it. Also, I should not be allowed to even look at this one until I've actually studied all the languages for which I currently have reference books.
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