The Low Countries. Jaargang 15

Cultural Policy

Virtual Dutch

There are some 250 universities across the globe that teach Dutch language and culture in one form or another. The figure sounds, and is, impressive. But when you consider that China alone has well over a thousand universities, you begin to see things in perspective.

In the Anglophone world, interest in studying Dutch at university level has always been modest. The reasons for this are well known. Dutch does not figure prominently in the list of what we now call ‘heritage languages’ because Dutch-speakers who emigrate to foreign lands exchange their native tongue for the local language at the earliest opportunity. Dutch culture - both from Flanders and the Netherlands - is known internationally for its painters and latterly perhaps for its architects and fashion-designers, but not so much for its writers. If for people outside the Low Countries the economic benefit of studying a language of limited diffusion is not obvious, the perception of Holland in particular as having adopted English as its second language makes the effort seem even more futile.

The dominance of English is of relatively recent date, but it has had a significant side-effect in the last couple of decades. Young people throughout the English-speaking world have become reluctant to learn foreign languages, in schools as well as at universities. As a result, Dutch studies at universities in Great Britain, for example, have struggled. Very few students now choose Dutch as their sole major, although combinations with other subjects continue. Until recently there were two fully-fledged university departments of Dutch in the country, now there is just one, at University College London (UCL).¹

This does not mean that Dutch studies in Britain are dead or dying. It does mean that numbers, and consequently resources, are limited and, if anything, dwindling. Virtual Dutch was devised as at least a partial response to this problem.

Virtual Dutch is an alliance between the main university centres where Dutch is taught in Britain. It comprises the universities of Sheffield and Cam-

1 For details see Rhian Heppleston and Roel Vismans, ‘Lying Low? Low Countries Studies in Great Britain and Ireland in the Early Twenty-First Century’, 2006, http://alcs.group.shef.ac.uk/databases/lyinglow/lyinglow.htm. The survey was conducted for the Association of Low Countries Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (alcs).

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bridge as well as UCL and exploits information technology to enhance the teaching and learning provision in Dutch studies across these three institutions. The rest of the world benefits as well, which is why Virtual Dutch is of more than local significance.

The short-term aims of Virtual Dutch are straightforward: to increase the critical mass of students by making it possible for them to work together across institutions; to create shared online resources that can be used either as part of a structured course or for autonomous learning; and to pool the expertise of staff in different locations. All of this lays the groundwork for a more ambitious longer-term aim, which is to set up distance-learning opportunities for university-level Dutch studies in a global environment.

Virtual Dutch has now been around for some five years and has expanded steadily. Its most visible and public manifestation is the ever-growing collection of online materials at its main website, www.ucl.ac.uk/dutch/virtualdutch. The collection, freely available to anyone with internet access, comprises reference grammars and multimedia self-study packs. There are two grammars, one for beginners with only a basic knowledge of Dutch and one for more advanced learners. Both are aimed at speakers of English and use English as their medium of communication, with an abundance of examples in Dutch. The self-study packs are more numerous and more colourful. There are currently about thirty of these packs, each addressing a particular topic at a particular level. The topics cover modern society, history and literature as well as language. The levels are defined as beginners, intermediate and advanced, reflecting both the expected linguistic competence in Dutch and specific subject knowledge. All the packs integrate graphics and sound with text, some of them using moving as well as still images, and in one experimental case synchronising voice-over with text on the screen. Most are available in both an English and a Dutch version. The packs are typically built around one short core text which is then elucidated and contextualised: the vocabulary is explained by means of pop-up windows, the key text can be heard (read with the appropriate Dutch or Flemish accent!), there are visual illustrations and questions to test comprehension (with model answers one or two clicks away), and so on. Individual packs may be navigated in a number of ways, and users can leave feedback if they wish. The topics vary from the contemporary multicultural society in the Netherlands and the Flemish Movement around the First World War to modern and traditional literature (Boon, Couperus, Multatuli, Hooft,...), a history of the Dutch language, a taster of Amsterdam and a full-size portrait of Brussels.

There are also materials that are not in the public domain. They consist of online courses requiring tutor support and of courses using a virtual learning environment (VLE) to which all three institutions taking part in Virtual Dutch subscribe. The VLE, with its discussion board and chatrooms, also enables students from UCL, Sheffield and Cambridge to collaborate on joint projects which are backed up with videoconferencing sessions. Two such projects run every year for a period of five to eight weeks each. One concerns cultural studies, the other translation from Dutch into English. The translation project is built around the year's Writer in Residence, who is based in London but visits the other two universities. In fact, the writer is the only person who sees everyone involved: the students themselves only meet in cyberspace and on the videoconferencing screens! But in the process they pick up more than academic wisdom. They learn communication and negotiation skills quite different from those acquired in a classroom, they appreciate the technological experience as a career skill, and more often than not they make friends at a distance.

The added value of IT-based collaboration as pioneered by Virtual Dutch was highlighted in a report published in September 2003 by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the body that distributes government funds to universities nationally. The praise came in a chapter of the report called ‘Excellent Learning and Teaching’. At that time the Virtual Dutch initiative was still in an experimental stage. It has since gone from strength to strength. This is due in part to the dedication of those driving the project, in part also to funding for it being made

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available by such organisations as Britain's University Council for Modern Languages and the Dutch Language Union (Nederlandse Taalunie).

Current plans include an overhaul of all thirty or so multimedia self-study packs to improve interlinking between them and between the packs and the two online grammars, an online self-access course teaching specialist reading skills in seventeenth-century Dutch and a similar course for Business Dutch, and the use of wikis. It is hoped also that before long there will be two comprehensive online courses for English-language learners of Dutch, one at beginners and one at intermediate level.

When these components are in place, distance learning can start in earnest. It will mean that universities will no longer have to wait for students to come to them in person to learn Dutch or to engage in Dutch studies. Virtual Dutch will take the materials to the learners, wherever they are, and they will be able to learn in their own time and at their own pace. Of course, this will not reverse the declining interest in modern languages in the Anglophone world generally. Dutch studies will remain a minority subject at British and American universities. But it will be a more dynamic and more technologically savvy subject, and its reach will be global. Bearing that in mind, it is perhaps not such a bad thing that Virtual Dutch, which addresses primarily English-speakers, operates mostly on the basis of English.

Theo Hermans

www.ucl.ac.uk/dutch/virtualdutch