Abstract
The popularity of MOOCs – massive open online courses, i.e. online courses that can be used by large numbers of learners without formal entrance requirements – has skyrocketed in recent years, with a broad range of courses made available by major MOOC platforms such as Coursera, Udacity or EdX, but also by smaller providers. At the same time, very few MOOCs cover language learning. This review will discuss one MOOC – ‘Exploring English: language and culture’ – that attempted to close this gap, and will describe the specific challenges that language learning poses for MOOCs.
Highlights
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes
The popularity of MOOCs - massive open online courses, i.e. online courses that can be used by large numbers of learners without formal entrance requirements – has skyrocketed in recent years, with a broad range of courses made available by major MOOC platforms such as Coursera, Udacity or EdX, and by smaller providers
‘Exploring English: Language and culture’ was a free 6-week MOOC by the British Council that ran on the FutureLearn platform from September 1st till October 12th 2014, and which is scheduled to be repeated in February 2015
Summary
This review will discuss one MOOC – ‘Exploring English: language and culture’ - that attempted to close this gap, and will describe the specific challenges that language learning poses for MOOCs. ‘Exploring English: Language and culture’ was a free 6-week MOOC by the British Council (lead educator: Chris Cavey) that ran on the FutureLearn platform (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-english-language-culture) from September 1st till October 12th 2014, and which is scheduled to be repeated in February 2015. The course focused on learning English as a foreign language at B1 level (Council of Europe, 2001), and included content learning about a wide range of cultural topics as well as opportunities for intercultural learning, primarily through interactions between learners.
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