Investigating the Use of a MOOC as a Component of a University Language Course

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been gaining popularity both in the formal educational sector and among individuals who want to gain new skills. MOOCs provide access to up-to-date learning materials and the best instructors, help develop learners' self-regulation and time-management skills. When integrated into a discipline, MOOCs bring in variety and novelty. Despite the growing popularity of MOOCs, their use in the context of tertiary education in Russia is underresearched. This study aims to explore the experience of the use of a language MOOC as a component of a university Advanced English course. 269 bachelor students at National Research University Higher School of Economics took a pre-test before they engaged in the MOOC in a self-study mode and completed a post-test after they finished the online course. To assess the effectiveness of the integration, the researchers compared pre-test and post-test results. The comparison demonstrated a moderate gain in the students' grammatical skills: there is a growth from 10.745 points as the average result exhibited in the pre-test (Md=10, Me=11, SD=2.29) to 14.3 points as the average of the final test (Md=15, Me=15, SD=1.928, Max=16). The most considerable gain was observed in the abilities to recognize errors in parallel constructions, to identify the correct and incorrect use of punctuation in complex sentences, to paraphrase with inversion. A questionnaire administered to investigate the students' perceptions of the experience yielded contradictory results. On the one hand, the majority of students evaluated the experience of MOOC integration as positive and successful. Though the course content was not completely new to the students (M=3.1), the students found the MOOC quite useful (M=3.7). The students named such advantages of MOOCs as the opportunities to revise and recycle the known material, its structured and multimodal delivery, flexibility and convenience of the instructional format. In their opinion, MOOC materials are comprehensive, clear, detailed and accessible to learners with varied backgrounds. However, the students mentioned the lack of contact with the instructor and peers and the need for additional practice. According to the Community of Inquiry framework, cognitive, social and teaching presence define the success of online education. The students' cognitive and social engagement was incomplete as they engaged with MOOC materials mostly receptively without the opportunity to have communicative practice. To conclude, MOOCs can be successfully integrated into university language courses, as students embrace them as an opportunity to diversify the learning experience through the engagement with multimodal materials and new instructors. Students value the individualization of the learning experience MOOCs provide. The experience can be enriched if students can discuss the materials and get the discipline instructor's feedback to ensure their cognitive and social engagement.

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