Community-Oriented Teaching is an online asynchronous professional development opportunity for language teachers teaching in any modality. The class focuses on engagement within our classroom communities and beyond with the target language-speaking community locally and globally. We first explore what makes our language learning class communities special, review various community building efforts (e.g. extracurricular experiences) and reassess what realistic expectations for community engagement in various modalities may be.

The course will also invite participants to consider the affordances and constraints of virtual exchanges between learners and target language speakers. Setting up a successful exchange, whether a two-way or a one-way learning experience, requires careful consideration of learner comfort, language proficiency, and cultural contexts.

The course intends to provide background for incorporating engagement with the target language community into the curriculum, and for instructors to develop an exploratory project/plan that fits into their curricular context, e.g. tasks, projects, proposal for technology/community engagement integration.