Abstract:

The article covers e-Learning Blended course experiment and describes most important features and matters of how to plan,design and implement a practical course on Translation Studies with Internet. PBWORKS, wiki - based LMS, free for educators, was used for the course design and collaborative online teaching and learning.
Translation Studies course was tought for University students specialised in Linguistics, Intercultural Communications and Business English. It was created and realized as a Blended (Hybrid) one, combining face-to-face classes (once a week) with further online collaborative studies and assignments. In general, the course lasted two semesters or one academic year. Total number of students involved - 40 (all had writers' access to the site) - for one teacher (as site admin). All students had only humanitarian background, with no previous training on how to use wiki or PBWORKS. All of them successfully joined the site, but it took them in average from 3 to 6 months to get accustomed to such type of studies. After having been integrated to this site, none of the students refused to leave it. By the end of the course, even 'the weakiest' of them showed much better performance in comparison to those who learned within traditional academic system and surrounding (no Internet).
Online wiki-based LMS site was available out of class for academic and social communication, individual and group work, with personal access through any mobile, laptop or desktop computers at any suitable place and time. PBWORKS site collaboration supposed working on mostly written or oral-written translations from English into Russian and back. Besides, it served as active additional and rich multimedia resource for cultural, political, social and business knowledge for the students. The approach of combining academic and social teaching and learning with all-on-one-site syllabus and communication was realized. The experiment showed the benefits of the integrative methods of online Blended, Autonomous, Collaborative, Mobile and Flipped e-Learning concepts.
The wiki-based LMS site design and the course implementaion revealed the urge, efficiency and necessity of such pedagogical approach for professional translators and interpreters training and their vocational education, regardless number of students and choice of foreign languages.
The author of the article exposes main design and syllabus features of the course and provides some analytical feedback and statistics on the experiment. Some useful methodological and practical recommendations on how to merge similar course with standard academic curriculum are also given.
Based on Digital Bloom's Taxonomy, the experimental online Blended wiki-based LMS course for translators contributed to the development of e-Learning methodology, theory of online Blended pedagogy, foreign languages and intercultural communications study in general.
The benefits of such pedagogical approach could be used to develop both students' and teachers' new integrative multi-skills in the frames of Higher Education: different languages and cultures knowledge, deep translation activities and professional abilities, advanced techno-savvy and Web 2.0 Internet skills, many special subjects (e.g. business) learning and teaching, formal (academic) and informal (social) communication styles practising. All simultaneously, at the same time, on one site, even by students and a teacher with only humanitarian background.

Keywords:

Blended learning, e-learning, Translation Studies, Linguistics, Internet, Wiki, Collaborative Learning, Foreign Languages, Pedagogy, Autonomous Learning.