Upcoming CourseShare Courses

What is CourseShare?

The Big Ten Academic Alliance’s CourseShare program allows students of Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) at participating institutions to “enjoy the opportunity to take specialized courses” offered by other Big Ten institutions. Students pay their home institution’s tuition and receive home institution credit for the course. The LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership is proactively advertising and offering the following courses through CourseShare. Please follow this link for more information on the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s CourseShare program.

Fall 2023 and Winter 2024

Cultures of the Lusophone World – hosted at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Fall 2023) and University of Chicago (Winter 2024)

In Cultura do Mundo Lusófono (Cultures of the Lusophone World ), students will explore the many Lusophone cultures through the study of a wide variety of materials that address selected aspects of the culture, history, and geography of countries that comprise the Lusophone world – Angola, Azores, Brazil, Portugal, Cabo Verde, Madeira, Mozambique, Goa, Guiné-Bissau, Guiné-Equatorial, Macau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste. Through the use of authentic materials, this task-based Intermediate-High/Advanced-Low language course targets the development of writing, listening-comprehension and reading skills, with a strong emphasis in oral proficiency in Portuguese. Students will write a number of short assignments and participate in multiple class interactions, using authentic readings and listening segments as linguistic models on which to base their own production. Students will learn about food, music, history, tourism, fashion, and politics, among other topics, of the many different places where Portuguese exists, as they expand their knowledge of the Portuguese language through a solid sequence of interactive activities online. At the end of the course students should be more comfortable discussing topics related to the challenges and diversity found in the Lusophone world.

Additional details:

  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – The course will be held during the fall semester at UIllinois (August 21-December 6) on Tuesday/Thursdays from 12:30-1:50pm (Central time).  
  • University of Chicago – This course will run during the Winter quarter (January 3 – March 9) at the University of Chicago. CourseShare students at institutions who are on semesters will still get 3 semester credits (45 contact hours), which means it will be an accelerated course for any semester students who take it. The semester students will have extra synchronous sessions to do the work needed for the full contact hours for their semester credits.

Who developed the course?  

The Portuguese Working Group (with members from MSU, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and University of Chicago) in the LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership project developed this course.

Interested in enrolling?

Are you a student at a Big Ten Academic Alliance institution? Reach out to your institution’s Portuguese coordinator and CourseShare coordinator to start the enrollment process.