Abstract:

One of the main global trends in modern vocational and higher education, Applied Linguistics including, is the development of Blended Learning technologies.

Nowadays, a collaborative approach is widely used in the Blended Learning educational model and proved to be efficient in language education.

The author research the evolution of the Blended Learning notion and offers the term and definition of the collaborative wiki didactics and lists its main and specific features in the frames of the Blended Learning concept. The blended wiki educational model is based on the author's ten years practical experience of wiki LMS courses design and implementation with both students in linguistics and non-linguistic universities. Most articles about those projects were published and could be found in EDULEARN online library since 2012.

It is especially important to explore and practice blended collaborative and project-based pedagogical methods at higher education level in order to create new courses from the scratch, even without any LMS and any ready syllabi adoption, to assure real quality of education.

At present, innovative online technologies and strong internet software developers, such as Google, provide educators easy access to the sources, like Virtual Environments and Cloud, for e-portfolios and any courses or projects hosting as a simple alternative to any LMS.

For example, due to the fact that all Google applications integrated the main wiki-feature - shared remote group access for the same text editing on one webpage - collaborative wiki didactics can be widely and easily used in any BL courses. So, that proves the author's experimental project. It describes general design patterns and gives some special instruction for such a course for linguists and translators.

Another important point shared in the article is how to integrate key national text Corpora as one of the most important online Open Educational Resources (OER) for linguists and translators to the course. Comparative corpora projects help to create and implement a new syllabus without any books or ready teaching materials. Another benefit of the offered methodology is that it allows training students basic research skills at the same time within the same subject course.

To sum up, the article briefly outlines definitions of key terms, gives the main design and instruction advice of such an experimental course. Useful links to the open online resources and several screenshots of authentic students' final reports on this course are included.

The article may be of interest to educators and researchers, linguists and translators practicing Blended Learning and wikis at higher education level.

Keywords:

Blended Learning, wiki, linguistics, translation studies, course design and instruction, education, best practice.