Four different free online courses and websites from seven different universities today exploring multilingualism

1. First up, Glasgow University with Multilingual Learning for a Globalised World, a MOOC that explores “multilingual education and how it can impact and improve education and even wider society” https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/multilingual Four hours a week for three weeks, this one.

2. South to The Netherlands next, for the University of Groningen’s Multilingual Practices: Tackling Challenges and Creating Opportunities, which covers the “central aspects of multilingualism in today’s globalised societies, such as cognition, policies and education” https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/multilingual-practices This one’s three hours a week for four weeks!

3. The motto of this ‘e-course’ on Multilingual education, put together by a team from universities in Tartu (Estonia), Freiburg (Germany), Bolzano (Italy) and Primorska (Slovenia), is the Bulgarian proverb, “The more languages you speak, the more human you are” https://sisu.ut.ee/multilingual/avaleht Let me know if you know of a similar proverb in another language, please! This one’s a seven-week course.

Here’s the introductory video https://sisu.ut.ee/?jwsource=cl (You might need to turn up the volume on your device; it was a bit quiet on my laptop.)

4. The Lost Wor(l)ds website from Sheffield University, which aims “to normalise multilingualism and embed it in formal education systems, through a focus on nature and sustainability”, is (in its own accurate description) “a website full of activities and ideas to help encourage and facilitate multilingualism” https://www.multilingualism-in-schools.net/

Here’s a description of the project https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/education/research/early-childhood/lost-worlds-language-heritage-and-forgetting

5. And, finally, while you’re in the Lost Wor(l)ds website, take a look at the Schools for Sanctuary website with which it is closely associated https://schools.cityofsanctuary.org/