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In October 2013, an action research project on distance learning was initiated by three lecturers at the School of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies of the University of Mainz (Germany). The project is being run within the framework of a program sponsored by the University to investigate the feasibility of and modalities for using the Moodle distance-learning platform to enhance the institution's classroom-based educational offerings. Interest in the project on the part of the three lecturers in the School's Division of English Linguistics and Translation Studies the School was piqued partly by the opportunity to finally experiment with this now virtually ubiquitous distance learning platform, but also by the potential synergies with curriculum and instructional development work that had been done in the department specifically based on a social constructivist (SC) pedagogical epistemology. The fact that the School itself had not endorsed any particular pedagogical epistemology raised the question as to whether teachers who have not thought about learning in terms of a SC process would be able to use the platform effectively – or, on the other hand, if the platform might help them see learning from social constructivist perspective. In addition, another ongoing research project in the Division has yielded a tentative model of translator competence development. The Moodle project participants hoped that this Moodle project would offer an excellent opportunity to test the viability of the model, particularly with respect to the scaffolding of learning over the course of the program of studies.

The action research project was initiated to experiment with Moodle on the basis of a total of three courses, one taught by each of the three different teachers. In accordance with the cyclical principle of action research, each course would be run twice in succession over the course of two semesters. In this way, initial findings during the first iteration would be used to modify and improve our use of the platform during the second iteration.

Each of the three teachers involved in the project offered one of the courses that he or she would have offered in a conventional classroom-based format and adapted it to incorporate Moodle, and each teacher wound up using the platform in a different way. Over the course of the semester, the team of three teachers and three respective student assistants met a number of times to share experiences and discuss problems they had encountered while using Moodle. The author interviewed the other two teachers at the end of the semester to gather qualitative information from them on the success of the initial courses and on changes that they expected to implement during the second iteration. (This text is being written at the end of the first project semester). Tentative results suggest that Moodle can be well-suited for use in different ways depending on the level of complexity of the learning to be done and on teachers' respective pedagogical epistemologies, and that it may in fact be useful for helping teacher's move towards an educational approach that is in line with an interactive, humanistic and holistic SC epistemology.