1999 NFLRC Summer Institute Evaluation: “Self-Directed Learning: Materials and Strategies”

Abstract

The University of Hawaiʻi National Foreign Language Resource Center has been operating for nine years. Each year a Summer Institute (SI) has been run, and it is generally the most intensive and expensive operation in the yearly activities. Although they last only a few weeks, yearly planning for the next one begins almost as soon as the current one has finished, and a great deal of person-power and accumulated expertise goes into the delivery of each Institute. The Advisory Board, as part of its general oversight role considers each year’s Institute as proposed and reviews it upon completion by way of an evaluation report. The present report, then, is directed to the Board1, UH NFLRC Director, and to the Workshop facilitators, as its primary audience (though it is, or will be, a publicly-available document, of interest to other readers as well). The present evaluation report is intended to provide the reader with an accounting of this part of the work of the University of Hawaiʻi NFLRC, through giving a sense of the form and processes of the SI, as well as a providing good faith assessment by an appropriately qualified observer. This year’s Summer Institute was the ninth to date, and was entitled “Self-Directed Learning: Materials and Strategies.” A particular focus, as with past summer institutes at this site, as well as ongoing activities of this NFLRC, was the less-commonly taught languages.