Online IT enterprise workshop - redux

After wrestling with the course content and trying to decide how to approach the audience (Thai students with limited English Language capabilities) it occurred to me that I am trying to address the wrong audience. While it is possible to develop content for this particular audience (non-native language speakers), there are some problems that are either insurmountable or would require too many man-hours to overcome.

For example, the students here do not have a strong interest in reading in Thai, let along reading English. Extensive translations of written materials would probably not be used. My thought is that  written content would have to be translated and the format would have to change to a picture-book/information graphic method, coupled with project-based activities in order to be effective.

Another wrinkle are the cultural references that are part of the open-content video materials. Excellent as the MIT and Stanford video courses are, it has proven to a time-intensive effort to translate slang and change references so that the conversations are easy to follow. While we will finish several videos it is unclear as to whether the materials will prove useful to the younger Thai students.

The solution, then, has been to reconsider the target audience. As I have thought through the problems that we've had with the open content. it occurred to me that the faculty here will deliver and teach in the new curriculum (IT business/innovation management). About half of the faculty here have sufficient English language skills to take advantage of the video and employ the materials as they would know best. The professors here are motivated to make the new curriculum work well and so the most useful approach appears to be to support the faculty. 

This seems to be a reasonable approach -- and one that will provide the most benefit for the future of the Mukdahan (and main UBU) campus. This change does not effect efforts to evaluate usage and seems to provide better options all around to improve teaching, develop the new curriculum, and make research projects.