UNIT 2: Pre-assessments & Course Search

Lesson 1: Pre-assessments - What are the Needs of You and Your Students?

Aim: Participants will assess their needs and their students' needs.

It is said that a great number of MOOCs are delivered in English. More surprising point is that many non-native English speakers are taking MOOCs. As a matter of fact, not many MOOCs courses which deal with English teaching and learning exist (Buendgens-Kosten, 2015; Erwen & Wenning, 2017); nonetheless, some studies have been conducted regarding English education utilizing MOOCs. Additionally, Zhou, Li, and Xu (1995) mentioned that “inspired by MOOC’s concept, the traditional college English teaching, which mainly takes place in the form of classroom teaching and focuses largely on students’ acquisition of language points, can establish an online micro lesson teaching system, which should be designed not only as a website for resource publishing and downloading, but also as a teaching platform which provides teachers and students with exclusive discussion zone, free privilege and flexible ways in resource sharing, and integrates resource sharing with community discussion” (p. 156) (as cited in Erwen & Wenning, 2017).

According to Erwen and Wenning (2017), the visual aids like videos clips help learners reduce cognitive burden which they can face during the language learning process. They also said that watching the visual aids before the class is great for the learners to study language more effectively. Moreover, since the visual aids are in recorded forms, the learners are able to replay them again and again as they want. This iterative pre-reviewing process is of help for sufficient language learning before taking the content class. Furthermore, large data that is created during this process can be analyzed for further investigation of effective teaching method. For instance, visits to the course website, results of quizzes, writings on the online discussion forums can be useful data to track their learning styles, habits, understandings (Erwen & Wenning, 2017).

From now on, in order to see the potential of using MOOCs in real English class, participants will conduct the pre-assessment. This pre-assessment is intended to examine participants' interest in MOOCs and Coursera, and usage of the courses as supporting materials for their students' English learning. Please conduct the assessment yourself below and follow the direction that you can find at the end.

Lesson 2: Searching a Course

Aim: Participants will be able to search for relevant courses of Coursera.

Once participants understand the needs of them and their students to use Coursera in English teaching and learning, they can search the courses of Coursera in person. The steps are as below, but for more details, please see this manual as well (File:Course search.pdf).

1. Go to www.coursera.org.

2. Create an account and log in.

3. Click "Catalog" on top of the front page.

4. Select "Language Learning" (Other catalog and course can be flexibly chosen in accordance with students' needs).

5-6. Click buttons to refine the search by selecting the language of subtitle and course.

7. Click "See All" and choose a course.

Next, go to UNIT 3: Application - How to Use MOOCs for English Learning