THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 87, No. 1, October 2013 Printed in U.S.A. New Orientations for French Language Learning: Is Synchronous Distance Education a Viable Solution? by Marylaura Papalas Budget cuts resulting from the global recession that began in 2008 and which has not yet seen its end have touched many higher education institutions in the United States. The humanities, and more specifically programs that do not gener- ate as much money in terms of grants and other funding as their counterparts in the sciences, have absorbed significant fiscal reductions and even fallen victim to program closures. In the face of what can seem like an attack on the legitimacy and value of foreign language skills, most French instructors have begun to think seriously about which actions to take in order to save programs and promote French to administrators and students alike. This article points to distance education (DE) as one direction for French studies. Since DE can signal money-saving to administrators, there is often a willingness to invest in it, which is one reason why there were available funds to design DE courses in my university, despite a dearth of money everywhere else. Although I do not suggest that online learning is the solution to budget cuts, taking advantage of available funds may help sustain French programs. Offering French DE can also prove to administrators, grant providers, students, and the general public that French education is capable of evolving and catering to the demands of a fiscally conscientious higher education system and a growing student popu- lation with diverse needs. Since 2010, our state system has been looking at DE programs as a way of streamlining education costs and catering to a variety of student needs (Ferreri; Cochrane). My university, where over 27,000 students are enrolled fulltime, receives more DE funding than any other in the system, making it the state leader in DE classes. More than 9,000 students are in at least one DE class, and 5,800 students are enrolled exclusively in DE sections. Fifteen percent of all courses here are DE (Sessoms). Taking advantage of a grant opportunity, I designed an online beginning French course to be taught in Spring 2011 in order to compare the outcomes with a “traditional” (face-to-face, on-campus) beginning French course I was teaching 87 87.1 Article 1-6:Layout 1 5/28/13 11:04 PM Page 87