The two-day conference, held in partnership with the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures' South Asian Language Program and the Language Resource Center, invited South Asian Language instructors to explore the possibility of collaborations in teaching and material productions with the focus on designing a standard curriculum for South Asian languages that would help in meeting CourseShare demands and challenges across the Big Ten institutions, and to share expertise with the South Asian community and public school instructors.

The engaging first keynote address, “Strategies for Facilitating Interaction and Collaboration in the Target Language,” was delivered by Dr. Felecia Lucht, Academic Director of the Language Program Office at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Prof. Shaheen Parveen of Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Prof. Jameel Ahmad of the University of Washington discussed “Proficiency-based lessons aligned with ACTFL's World-Readiness Standards” and “Three-years-integrated Urdu Curriculum: Balancing All Four Skills” respectively. Julie Evershed, the Director of U-M's Language Resource Center, presented on “Resources for Language Instruction: Tried and True, New and Bold” before taking all attendees on a tour of the Language Resource Center (LRC).

UC–Berkeley faculty lecturer and creator/host of Stanford-based Chai Time Radio Pranjali Sirasao delivered the conference's second keynote, “Shaping the Future of Language Teaching: Collaboration Between Academia, Industry, and Technology.” Dr. Mithilesh Mishra, Director and Language Coordinator of Hindi and Urdu at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, then spoke on “Using AI for Developing Metacognition in Language Teaching and Learning.” This was followed by talks given by Rashmi Sharma of Indiana University Bloomington, as well as U-M Fulbright scholars Sneha Sharma and Spozmai Khan. A third keynote, delivered by Christi Merrill, Professor of South Asian Literature and Postcolonial Theory and Chair Department of Comparative Literature at U-M, shared her innovative collaboration experience, entitled “Collaborations at the University of Michigan: Translation, Language Justice, and AI,” concluded the events of Day 1.

Day 2 of the conference opened with remarks by Somnath Ghosh, Consulate General of India, Chicago, informing attendees about resources available for teaching certificates, special scholarships, and grants from the Indian Government and particularly from the Central Institute of Hindi at Agra. U-M's own Dr. Syed Ekhteyar Ali, Director of the South Asian Language Program, outlined the South Asian Language Program's accomplishments and efforts. He mentioned that ALC's South Asian Language Program, in terms of the number of languages and student enrollments, is in fact the biggest in the Midwest, and among the top four in the nation. David Brick, Associate Professor of Sanskrit Literature, then spoke on “Approaches to Teaching Sanskrit at an American Institution,” highlighting the challenges and approaches in teaching Sanskrit grammar and vocabulary. Dr. Pinderjeet Kaur Gill, Teaching Professor of Hindi and Punjabi, and Faijul Hoque, Lecturer of Bengali, gave a joint presentation entitled “Engaging Students Through Project-based Learning.” Urdu instructor Umar Anjum, in his presentation entitled “Creating Theme-specific Images Using AI in Urdu,” shared his findings on how AI created some translations and pictures when he and his students used ChatGPT. In her presentation “Addressing Linguistic and Pedagogical Barriers in Tamil-language Teaching,” Pathima Raviraj (Tamil language instructor) shared her teaching approach. Phill Cameron, LRC Instructional Learning Senior, talked about gamification and the ways to create some interactive learning exercises using the H5P App in his presentation entitled “An Introduction to H5P and Presentational Games.”

The conference concluded with two large group discussion panels. “The Role of Community in Keeping the Language Alive,” saw the participation of three members of the Houston-based non-profit organization Indus Arts Council, a leading Urdu language provider and arts-and-culture organization of Pakistani descent in North America: Founder and President Shahid Iqbal, Language Program Director Talat Awais, and language Teacher Samina Kasim. They were joined in this panel by a group of community volunteers engaged in Hindi-language pedagogy in Wisconsin: Vijay Sharma, Muktak Sharma, Geeta Sharma, Sarita Singh, Chandrashekhar Singh, and Garima Periwal. 

Finally, U-M CourseShare Coordinator and Director of Academic Technologies Services Dr. Monika Dressler, in her presentation entitled “CourseShare Challenges—Perspective for Developing Collaborations,” helmed a discussion panel that touched upon developing collaborations for material development and sharing, as well as the standardization of South Asian language curricula across BTAA institutions. The participants found her presentation very informative and useful and learned whom to reach out to for sharing their course offerings and exploring possible CourseShare opportunities.

The conference participants and the community volunteer attendees from Wisconsin said that it “provided valuable insights and networking opportunities for us, focusing on challenges and strategies in community language programs.” Praising the conference as “highly organized and informative,” they commended the diverse group of speakers who were included, in particular giving recognition to the presentation on, and tour of, the U-M LRC led by Julie Evershed, which not only impressed them with the number of languages being offered at U-M but also led to them being connected with Dianna Murphy, Director of the Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who will potentially become a source of support in building the team's curriculum for community language programs in coming years.

More broadly, the volunteers said, “This conference highlighted and reinforced the value of community language classes and the role they play when students take Hindi in college. We also recognized the importance of certified teachers and the resources that may be available to help our volunteers obtain teaching certificates for their community work. It confirmed for our team what we had already experienced—that the textbooks that are used in India to teach Hindi are not appropriate to be used in our community Hindi classes. We also learned about heritage vs. non-heritage students.” The group affirmed that, given the opportunity, they would like to attend a future installment of the conference.