(1877) MOOCS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING: AN EFFORT TO EXPLORE AND EVALUATE THE FIRST PRACTICES

摘要

Access to open education, open content and open educational resources (OER) is gaining more andmore attention worldwide. According to The New York Times, 2012 was the “year of the MOOC”(Massive Open Online Courses), while 'CourseEra', the largest 'MOOC' provider, reported registering2.8 million students in March 2013, partnerships with 62 high prestige Universities and hundredscourses in several languages [1]. Recently 11 countries have joined forces to launch the first pan-European 'MOOCs' initiative, with the support of the European Commission (http://www.openuped.eu)in order to reshape EU education via open educational environments and open educational resources(OER).The arrival of MOOCs has already changed dramatically the idea of education and has orientedlearners to educational courses that are open, participatory, distributed and at the same time supportthe idea of lifelong networked learning.Language competencies and intercultural skills will more than ever be a part of the key qualificationsneeded to successfully work and live in this new reality. The need for MOOCs related to languageeducation has already paved the way for the creation of the first “open and massive” foreign languagecourses.Many researches have already shown that the web is a rich field in putting real communication topractice, and explore new forms to exercise one's language comprehension and fluency. Specifically,web 2.0 is participatory, immediate, authentic and it engages the community. All these are keyfeatures in language learning process and make Web 2.0 a promising language learning environment.However, the design and implementation of MOOCs with focus on language learning has not beenexplored yet and this paper aims to fill this research gap. More specifically the paper will first presentthe requirements for a successful online Language Learning course and then it will continue with theexploration of the use of MOOCs in Language Education. Next an evaluation of the platforms and theinstructional design used so far for Massive Open Online Language Learning Courses will follow.Finally, after the presentation of possible concerns and recommendations regarding the LanguageLearning MOOCs, there will be a discussion that aims to draw the first conclusions of this researchand share some future research plans.