Abstract:

The study discusses an attempt to repurpose and incorporate a freely available online MOOC on academic writing into the existing offline academic curriculum. To date a few hybrid learning models have been implemented at HE entities [Zhang, 2013], [Kloos et al 2014] in an attempt to benefit from the available MOOCs. Past research highlighted a few positive implications of suchlike blended learning approach [Aycock et al 2002], [Gilbert et al, 2011], [Rodrigues et al, 2011], etc. However, there has been little research on incorporating MOOCs created by third parties into language classes.

The authors present a case of a blended course on academic writing offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students at RUDN University, Moscow. Because of limited hours allocated to face-to-face tuition, it was decided to draw on existing educational resources and incorporate a MOOC on academic writing as an off-site module, the expectation was to create another educational dimension, increase learners’ exposure to academic L2 in self-paced independent environment. The students were requested to register for the course “How to write and publish a scientific paper” by École Polytechnique, which was offered on coursera.org. They were requested to complete course assignments online and participate in follow-up on-site discussion facilitated by the L2 instructor. The in-class offerings did not replicate an online component of the course and rather focused on linguistic aspects: academic vocabulary, summarizing and paraphrasing.

Upon completion of the academic writing module the students were asked to complete a Likert Scale based survey. The main results of the survey indicate that the biggest challenge was the misalignment of the weekly offerings. As novice writers, the students would prefer classroom activities to directly derive from the video lectures and materials covered online. However, the authors believe that supervision of writing a research paper lies outside the domain of ESP classroom and the L2 instructor does not possess necessary expertise to guide through the entire writing process. Having said that, academic English class can not be limited to building academic vocabulary, summarizing and paraphrasing skills, therefore introduction to writing and publishing a research paper must be a valuable component of the academic writing course. Additional results and possible solutions will be presented at the conference.

Keywords:

MOOC, academic writing, blended learning