Speaking Their Language: U-M Lecturer Uses AI, Relationship Building to Create Successful Online Courses
Mindy Arbaugh, Content Specialist
Learning another language can be transformative. It provides the ability to navigate and communicate in an unfamiliar environment and empowers people to pursue new opportunities and adventures.
University of Michigan lecturer Pamela Bogart is passionate about supporting these journeys, and after many years of developing and iterating her courses, she knows the first step in teaching language is connecting with her students. It’s an instructional approach that Bogart, Lecturer IV at the English Language Institute in the School of Literature Science and the Arts, has honed since joining ELI in 2000.
Her latest course, “Learning Languages with AI,” was built off her experience and success at the institute over the last two decades. Bogart was part of the ELI’s first online course offerings starting in 2015 and created an online pre-arrival summer course aimed at helping prepare new U-M graduate students.
In collaboration with the Center for Academic Innovation, she then spun that course into her first non-credit online course, “Preparing for Graduate Study in the U.S.: A Course for International Students,” which has drawn more than 30,000 learners since it debuted in 2017.
By centering her courses around relationships – with her and with fellow learners – Bogart’s approach allows her students to maximize their experience through inclusive activities designed to encourage them to share wisdom and insight with each other.
“That relationship building has a big impact on engagement in the course and sustaining energy across a whole semester,” Bogart said. “Like any effective teaching, providing adult students choices and learning opportunities that align with their goals and motivations results in more learning happening.”
The World at your Doorstep
Placing her students in the best position for success was paramount in designing “Learning Languages with AI,” which launched in August 2024. Bogart again prioritized student connections, this time leveraging the use of AI to show her students how to create a personalized, interactive learning environment.
The course leaves the choice of AI tools up to the individual, allowing learners who may have limited accessibility due to cost or availability the chance to participate in the exercises. Learners can practice conversing with an AI partner, or have the tool create a report with blank sections that the learner has to complete in their new language. In addition, the levels can be calibrated so students can build those skills at their own pace, deepening their confidence.
Offering the course on Michigan Online and Coursera opens the door for a wider variety of students, and can serve their needs and goals, whether academic, professional, or personal.
“Part of the structure of this most recent course was explicitly presuming that learners may be curious about this course because they’re trying to improve in any language at any level for any reason,” Bogart said. “The course keeps circling back to why are you here, and how could you do this kind of task in a way that is relevant to the reason that you came here?”
Tying real-world value to the curriculum is something Yulin Yu appreciates from her time as Bogart’s student and at ELI’s Graduate Speaking Clinic.
Yu, a PhD candidate at the U-M School of Information, worked with Bogart on improving her “elevator pitch” in English so she could more effectively share her ideas. Bogart helped Yu create a step-by-step plan to improve her speaking skills.
“As a non-native English speaker, I can honestly say Pamela has been a lifesaver,” said Yu, who will join the University of Arizona College of Information faculty in fall 2026. “She is one of the best instructors I’ve ever met and is incredibly skilled at designing instructional plans tailored to each student’s style and interests.”
A Multilingual Future for All
Finding new ways to serve her students is always on Bogart’s mind. Following yet another successful online launch, Bogart said she is already thinking about how language learning will continue to evolve, especially in the age of AI.
She sees more versions of synthesized voices like Siri and Alexa that better reflect diverse identities, and the potential to use AI to promote more language varieties and languages that are being overshadowed or even lost.
“It’s more mission-driven than market-driven,” Bogart said. “And so I think that can be a role for universities as well, to push the market in directions that may not be where the money lies, but is where the breadth of human knowledge and existence lies.”
Bogart, who humbly acknowledged knowing two languages “well” and another two at a beginner level, said her interactions with her students over the years have helped make her an effective and impactful instructor.
“I think what is exciting to me about being a language teacher are the human interactions and the intercultural sharing and learning and broadening our sense of what human existence is,” Bogart said. “And that comes from being in a multilingual space.”