Comments on: Italian language on the MOOC

By: Ruth C

Ruth C — Mon, 19 May 2014 09:01:17 +0000

Yes. The original blog should be modified if possible, as it is giving false information, and could cause problems and complaints which would be a shame at the start of such a promising course.

By: Bill Loughner

Bill Loughner — Tue, 13 May 2014 02:33:59 +0000

Google does translate to and from Latin – if that’s your question.

By: Alex Dow

Alex Dow — Mon, 12 May 2014 08:54:46 +0000

Numquid non in Latin?

By: Dave Potts

Dave Potts — Mon, 12 May 2014 06:20:59 +0000

You could try translate.google.co.uk, it has an attempt at translating most languages.with text as well as web sites.

If you site ends national suffix such as .it, google chrome will attempt to translate it for you in your native language such as English, it does not always get it right

By: Julia Gillen

Julia Gillen — Sun, 11 May 2014 12:07:22 +0000

I appreciate this difficult situation, but I would suggest you modify the beginning of this blog post so that people who glance at the summaries and don’t click “continue reading” aren’t left with the misleading impression that use of the Italian language will be welcomed. I doubt you want some participants’ first impression of participation to be that their comment is deleted.

By: Graeme Earl

Graeme Earl — Tue, 06 May 2014 14:09:21 +0000

Yes – the comments system will stay English only in order to encourage involvement by all learners and to make moderation easier. However, since the Portus team includes staff and students from Italy and elsewhere we will continue to support learning via Italian social media updates and this blog. We hope that Italian will be supported on the FutureLearn platform for future iterations of the course.

By: Adam Warren

Adam Warren — Tue, 06 May 2014 13:37:52 +0000

I’m sorry to pour cold water on this idea, but following an in-depth debate with FutureLearn I can confirm that it will not be possible to support Italian for this run of the Archaeology of Portus course. As Graeme says above, Futurelearn is open to the idea of international-language courses, but there are significant challenges that need addressing first. For example, although it would be simple to have transcripts/translations for videos and articles, there is no mechanism to support quizzes. In addition, moderating multi-language comments would be a huge challenge.

For these reasons, we regret to say that Italian will not be supported in this first run of the course, and Futurelearn will continue their policy of deleting any comments that are not in English.

By: Pat Oddy

Pat Oddy — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 10:42:58 +0000

Looking forward to Italian students’ participation and as much Italian language material as possible!

By: hazel parsons

hazel parsons — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 13:23:15 +0000

I shall have no trouble with this as I speak fairly fluent Italian. In fact I look forward to practicing it.