If you are looking into taking an online Spanish class for college credit you have probably seen Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ) pop up in your search engine. Of the few colleges that do currently offer online college Spanish courses, this is probably the largest program. Overall, I think the Spanish classes are run well and students have a good experience.
To learn about FCCJ’s distance education program in general go to: http://www.distancelearning.org/online.html. Here you will find information on admissions and procedures to get started. There are several different categories of students as far as the price of tuition. Go to: http://www.fccj.org/prospective/tuition/index.html and you will find the information on what you would pay. I think that you will find the prices reasonable.
The Spanish classes offered online are Spanish I and II. These are both sixteen week classes. In a previous article titled Online Spanish Course for College Credit with Park University I talked about the online textbook “En Linea”. This is an online version of the Spanish text book “Vistas”. FCCJ, and most other colleges who offer online Spanish classes, use this online text package too. When you sign up for the course you will receive information on how to order it, but if you are curious go to www.vhldirect.com and look at the information provided for EN LINEA v2.0+Vistas 3rd edition text.
During the semester you will be assigned exercises and tutorials in your online text. You submit them through the web site of the publisher and your instructor grades them. Unlike Park University, at FCCJ all the assessments are taken through Black Board. When you sign up for the online Spanish class you will get a Black Board account. This is where you will communicate with your instructor and other students. You will do your daily exercises through EN Linea, but everything else will be done in Black Board. Each week there is a quiz that covers the material for the week. Every two lessons covered there is an exam. Besides the Spanish lessons, exercises and tests you will also be required to participate in an English Discussion Board and a Spanish Discussion Board. The English board works like most other discussion boards in any online class. The instructor will post a topic and you must respond. The Spanish board is different. Within Black Board there is a voice board option. The instructor will record about five questions in Spanish for students to answer. The responses have to be in Spanish and recorded into a microphone. The questions are not too difficult and they can be looked up in the book.
At the end of the semester there is a comprehensive final which is a combination of multiple choice, fill in the blank and essay. Student must also have a final oral interview with the instructor on the phone or in the chat room provided by the online text. During the “interview” the instructor will ask questions that come from a list already provided to the student.
As with any online learning situation, it takes a self motivated learner to have success in this class. If you are consistent about getting your work in and posting your responses to the discussion boards you can do well in this class.
