Abstract:

In ideal circumstances, a distance course should provide students with learning materials and experiences that are not possible to get in a traditional face-to-face classroom.

The requirements of the military environment in the area of language acquisition are highly challenging for military professionals because within their careers they should pass appropriate levels of STANAG 6001 exams in English, which are prescribed for certain positions within the Army of the Czech Republic. The Language Centre of the University of Defence (UoD) was assigned by the Ministry of Defence to design an e-learning distance course for military personnel that would facilitate their language study in the area of receptive skills (reading and listening comprehension). Moreover, the online course could be used for the self-study of UoD students in the form of blended learning as an addition to face-to-face lessons.

Each course designer must consider the type of content being delivered and the ways that distance courses can enhance the learning process. Therefore, before designing the course, the authors conducted a needs analysis to determine whether the course is the best solution to deliver language training and if it can fill a gap in current knowledge and skills. As both answers were positive, the next steps were designing the storyboard, identifying the course content, defining learning objectives, and sequencing the course. The choice of the learning platform, LMS MOODLE, was clear from the very beginning as it is widely used at universities all over the world and is able to fulfil the expectations of interactivity and achievements tracking. Further, it offers a great variety of types of exercises with possibilities to add comments and explanations, and insert links and various types of recordings. The authors then decided on the structure of e-lessons, incorporating practice, assessment tests, and additional resources.

The authors’ ultimate goal was to describe the development of a special distance course, the first experience of piloting the course, and qualitative research outcomes gathered during the first months after launching the course.

Keywords:

Online language course, course development, storyboard, LMS Moodle, qualitative research outcomes, military environment, receptive skills.