7,660 research outputs found
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Mobile and Massive Language Learning
This chapter explores the relationship between mobile language learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs) and suggests how they may be combined. Over the past decade or so, mobile devices have become more powerful and potentially valuable for second language learning. Improvements in network bandwidth for such devices has also opened the door for them to be used as clients for online courses, social networks and social media, and more recently LMOOCs (or language MOOCS), thereby potentiating the mobility that they offer to language learning students. The authors argue and illustrate that Mobile-Assisted LMOOCs (or MALMOOCs) could improve the language learning experience for many people through task-based online and situated learning, including activities that encourage learners to collaborate and to capture and share their language experiences from everyday life
The use of ESP, MOOCs and the occupational world in the field of system engineering
The development of English communicative skills has become in one of the most critical requirements in the system engineering learners, for its competitive occupational market. It has affected countries which their native language is not English. Thus, they have seen the need to provide the learners English for specific purposes to get foreign languages skills in a specific domain. Engineering education is much more complicated than the other careers because it is technical, that's why students need to enhance their Professional English skills due to the fact their training involves the use of English continuously such as in the building of software, electrical device, online applications and so on. A new e-learning approach named MOOCs has disseminated the Higher Education context, due to the fact they enable the enrollment of a mass of learners in open online courses. Regarding the findings in this research for learning ESP efficient, the use of MOOCs would empower the development of communicative skills around the world. Also, the critical issue to use a MOOC is that engineering content is part of MOOCs, as well as any other educational tools in the technological worldwide. In methodological aspects, both ESP and MOOCs focus on Content-based instructions and Communicative Language Teaching with the assistance of task-based activities and network-based through authentic resources. As CBI and CLT base on the acquisition of a foreign language while the students are learning the content and style of a specific subject. However, this massive open online course is a luxurious investment
Motivation in a language MOOC: issues for course designers
Whilst several existing studies on foreign language learning have explored motivation in more traditional settings (Dörnyei, 2003), this paper presents one of the first studies on the motivation of participants in a MOOC.
The MOOC, Travailler en français (https://sites.google.com/site/mooctravaillerenfrancais/home), was a 5-week open online course for learners of French at level B1 of the CEFR, and aimed to develop language and employability skills for working in a francophone country. It took place in early 2014 and attracted more than 1000 participants.
Intrinsic motivation (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), is directly linked to one’s enjoyment of accomplishing a task. We conducted a study based on the cognitive variables of the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), and adapted the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory to the context of a MOOC in order to understand the expectancy beliefs and task values of participants engaging with the MOOC.
Participants answered a 40 Likert-type questions on enjoyment/ interest (i.e. I will enjoy doing this MOOC very much), perceived competence (i.e. I think I will be able to perform successfully in the MOOC), effort (i.e. I will put a lot of effort in this MOOC), value/usefulness (i.e. I think that doing this MOOC will be useful for developing my skills), felt pressure and tension (i.e. I think I might feel pressured while doing the MOOC) and relatedness (i.e. I think I will feel like I can really trust the other participants).
Results highlight significant factors that could directly influence intrinsic motivation for learning in a MOOC environment. The chapter makes recommendations for LMOOC designers based on the emerging profile of MOOC participants, on their motivation and self-determination, as well as on the pressures they might feel, including time pressures. Finally, the extent to which participants relate to each other, and are able to engage in social learning and interaction, is a real challenge for LMOOC designers
MOOC adaptation and translation to improve equity in participation
There is an urgent need to improve elementary and secondary school classroom practices across India and the scale of this challenge is argued to demand new approaches to teacher professional learning. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent one such approach and which, in the context of this study, is considered to provide a means by which to transcend traditional training processes and disrupt conventional pedagogic practices. This paper offers a critical review of a large-scale MOOC deployed in English, and then in Hindi, to support targeted sustainable capacity building within an education development initiative (TESS-India) across seven states in India. The study draws on multiple sources of participant data to identify and examine features which stimulated a buzz around the MOOCs, leading to over 40,000 registrations and a completion rate of approximately 50% for each of the two MOOCs
MOOCs in language education and professional teacher development: possibilities and potential
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) developed from the traditions of distance and selfaccess
learning, and are growing in popularity. As a new and exciting area of education, the
potential of MOOCs to transform education by allowing free access to courses for anyone with
the access to technology and the internet has potential for teachers and learners to benefit from
the courses offered. In this short article, three different perspectives on using MOOCs in
educational contexts within Japan are discussed. The first describes a collaborative project in
which one of the authors participated in a MOOC alongside a group of language learners. In the
next, individual students pursuing self-directed language learning chose MOOCs to meet their
various goals of knowledge and skill development as they prepared to study abroad. Finally, this
article considers the role of MOOCs in professional teacher development through the reflections
from a teacher participant. All three discussions relate their ideas to the themes of possibility and
potential, while considering practical issues for language learners and educators
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MOOCs for language learning – opportunities and challenges: the case of the Open University Italian Beginners’ MOOCs
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a fairly recent development in online education. Language MOOCs (LMOOCs) have recently been added to the ever-growing list of open courses offered by various providers, including FutureLearn. For learners, MOOCs offer an innovative and inexpensive alternative to formal and traditional learning. For course designers and developers, this emerging learning model raises important issues concerning the affordances of the new learning environment and the rationale for adopting a particular pedagogical approach to sustain the learning experience. The authors offer an insight into their own experiences in designing and delivering an Italian for Beginners MOOC on Future Learn. This case study explores the opportunities and challenges we met and the link with existing research
Dropout Model Evaluation in MOOCs
The field of learning analytics needs to adopt a more rigorous approach for
predictive model evaluation that matches the complex practice of
model-building. In this work, we present a procedure to statistically test
hypotheses about model performance which goes beyond the state-of-the-practice
in the community to analyze both algorithms and feature extraction methods from
raw data. We apply this method to a series of algorithms and feature sets
derived from a large sample of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). While a
complete comparison of all potential modeling approaches is beyond the scope of
this paper, we show that this approach reveals a large gap in dropout
prediction performance between forum-, assignment-, and clickstream-based
feature extraction methods, where the latter is significantly better than the
former two, which are in turn indistinguishable from one another. This work has
methodological implications for evaluating predictive or AI-based models of
student success, and practical implications for the design and targeting of
at-risk student models and interventions
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