Abstract:

As the internationalisation of higher education has become undeniably evident, universities are trying to be equipped with tools capable of helping incoming students with their mobility experience. And even if English is usually – but not always – the language of instruction in international courses, the knowledge of local languages and cultures is considered crucial for the individual appropriation of the mobility enlarged action-space.

In recent years, the University of Bologna has coordinated a European project which has developed and integrated in the learning offer the E-LOCAL courses, online courses of language and culture for Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Portuguese. The E-LOCAL courses were developed specifically to meet the needs of mobility students and focused on the acquisition of both linguistic skills at breakthrough level and (inter)cultural competence. The University of Bologna has now created in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano the E-LOCAL MOOC for the Italian course. This MOOC is intended to guide mobility students into the discovery of Italian language and culture. Using the same successful approach of the E-LOCAL course, the Italian E-LOCAL MOOC is a digital, innovative tool for supporting internationalisation.

This paper investigates the transition from the traditional course to the MOOC version, highlighting the challenges faced by the development team and depicting the peculiarities of the MOOC.

Keywords:

MOOC, language learning innovations, internationalisation.