OEIT was a critical player in breathing new life into Cultura, a legacy system of considerable pedagogical value in danger of extinction.
Cultura offers students the opportunity to explore the nuances of language through a networked inter-cultural system that promotes discourse between students in two language groups. Each student cohort shares subjective reflections on words that are similar in the two languages, thus allowing subtle differences in meaning to emerge.
Unable to be maintained by it's long-term host, Cultura was given an eviction notice with little lead time. Withindays, Peter Wilkins of OEIT had secured temporary access to the Cultura hard drive and helped create a WordPress site for the most important content. By securing a temporary address and transferring the newly created WP site to the permanent address, Wilkins was able to resurrect Cultura to a semi-stable state adequate enough to support it for the short term.
Cultura is an important cultural resource for language students at MIT, and thanks to Wilkins and OEIT is on track to be rejuvenated, enhanced and improved with a new WP platform.
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