New Perspectives in Science Education

The study discusses an attempt to repurpose and incorporate a freely available online MOOC on academic writing into the existing offline academic curriculum. To date a few hybrid learning models have been implemented at HE entities [Zhang, 2013], [Kloos et al 2014] in an attempt to benefit from the available MOOCs. Past research highlighted a few positive implications of suchlike blended learning approach [Aycock et al 2002], [Gilbert et al, 2011], [Rodrigues et al, 2011], etc. However, there has been little research on incorporating MOOCs created by third parties into language classes. The authors present several cases of blended learning courses offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students at RUDN University, Moscow. Because of limited hours allocated to face-to-face tuition, it was decided to draw on existing educational resources and incorporate a MOOCs in current ESP curriculum to increase learners’ exposure to academic L2 in self-paced independent environment. Upon completion of each module the participants were requested to complete a Likert scale based survey as well as share their de-identified informal feedback on the blended learning experience. As a result of a series of experiments the authors propose several comprehensive models of incorporating MOOCs in L2 classes and discuss limitations and advantages of this approach. Additional results and possible solutions will be presented at the conference.

Keywords: Blended learning, English for specific purposes, MOOC.

References:
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