Acknowledgements

These organizations and supporters truly believe in the importance of timely and relevant teaching and learning resources for the Ukrainian language. Thank you to all who supported us!

We appreciate the financial and logistical support of the Ukrainian Language Education Centre at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. Their backing provided us with the needed stability for this project and its progression.

The Department of Modern Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta is to be commended for taking the risk and allowing us, in 2015, to launch our pioneering ‘in progress’ blended-learning resources in the beginners’ Ukrainian classroom.

We also thank the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) for their expertise and wisdom in assisting us with the initial stages of the design and planning process and also with specific steps that allowed us to improve the resource. We were fortunate to receive the Blended Learning award from Provost and CTL, as well as the TLEF seed grant, which enabled us to successfully and productively work with an amazing Educational Developer, Graeme Pate, and also an Educational Technology specialist, Rishi Jaipaul, with strong support from the Associate Director, Norma Nocente, and Senior Research Coordinator, Francisco Vargas.

From the very inception of this project, the team included Oksana Perets, whose brilliant initial work on the online lessons became the base for many of the current stations.

Sergiy Kozakov is our invaluable specialist in computing for humanities. We have been fortunate to have him on our team throughout the project. His background in language pedagogy and in computing design, as well as his experience with electronic publishing, made the e-textbook appealing, user-friendly, and compatible with various electronic devices. We are also grateful to Daria Polianska, who joined the project at later stages, assisting with supplementary resources and overall look of the textbook.

Our special appreciation goes to our meticulous and diligent proofreader, Heidi Lernihan, whose expertise in language learning, outstanding editing talent, and exceptional attention to detail made the e-textbook a solid product. We are also grateful to Cindy Chopoidalo for her professional editing of supporting documents.

Many thanks to our talented photographer Yuriy Shushkevych from Rivne, Ukraine, and to the team who appears in the photos, Oksana in particular – who is a real person, by the way, as are other characters in our e-textbook journey.

We are also grateful to our students for their patience and their feedback, which also allowed us to improve the e-textbook greatly. As always, you are our inspiration and drive!