Language MOOCs (Language Massive Open Online Courses, or LMOOCs) are web-based online courses freely accessible for a limited period of time, created for those interested in developing their skills in a foreign language. As Sokolik (2014) states, enrolment is large, free and not restricted to students by age or geographic location. They have to follow the format of a course, i.e., include a syllabus and schedule and offer the guidance of one or several instructors. The MOOCs are not so new, since courses with such characteristics had been available online for quite a lot of time before Dave Cormier coined the term 'MOOC' in 2008. Furthermore, MOOCs are generally regarded as the natural evolution of OERs (open educational resources), which are freely accessible materials used in Education for teaching, learning and assessment.
Although there seem to be very few examples of LMOOCs offered by MOOC providers, authors, such as Martín-Monje & Barcena (2014), argue that these open online courses can be effectively designed to facilitate the development of communicative language competences in potentially massive and highly heterogeneous groups, whose main shared interest is to learn a foreign language. Scholarly research is equally incipient in the field, with only two monographs published to date on the topic.Dixon, E. & Thomas, M. (Eds.). (2015). Researching language learner interactions online: From social media to MOOCs. San Marcos, Texas: Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. These volumes, considered milestones of the emerging field, are based upon work taken from the well-established discipline of CALL (computer-assisted language learning), which has long proven the suitability of TELL (technology-enhanced language learning).Warschauer M. (1996). Computer Assisted Language Learning: an Introduction. In Fotos S. (ed.) Multimedia language teaching. Tokyo: Logos International: 3-20.Levy, M. (1997). Computer-assisted language learning: Context and conceptualization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Bax, S. (2003). CALL – past, present and future. System 31(1): 13–28.Hubbard, P. & Levy, M. (Ed.). (2006). Teacher Education in CALL. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Levy, M. & Stockwell, G. (2006). CALL dimensions: Options and issues in computer-assisted language learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Yang, Y. (2010). Computer-Assisted Language Learning Teaching: Theory and Practice. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 1(6): 909-912.
History and emergence The first LMOOCs started to appear in October 2012. Example courses include the three LMOOCs begun by the Spanish National Distance University (UNED). In relation to the English language, we have the LMOOC "Learn the first thousand words" (which had 45,102 students), and "Professional English" (with 33,588 students) and related to the German language, UNED offers the LMOOC "German for Spanish speakers" (with 22,438 students). The British Open University also started their Open Translation MOOC around the same time (they do not use the term "LMOOC" since it did not exist at that time). The course, "SpanishMOOC", integrated social media tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts in order to enhance synchronous oral interaction.McGuire, R. (2013). Offering MOOCs to market your product – Q&A with the Spanish MOOC teachers at Instreamia. Retrieved November 17, 2015 from http://moocnewsandreviews.com/offering-moocs-to-market-your-product-qa-with-the-spanish-mooc-teachers-at-instremia/ Ventura, P., Barcena, E. & Martín-Monje, E. (2014). Analysis of social feedback on written production and student engagement in MOOCs. Procedia - Social and Behavioural Sciences Journal 141: 512-517.
Another early example was Todd Bryant'sBryant, T. (2013). MOOCs + Learning Networks = The Mixxer. Retrieved November 15, 2015 from https://blog.coerll.utexas.edu/moocs-and-learning-networks-equals-mixxer joint launch of "English MOOC: Open Course for Spanish Speakers learning English" and "MOOC de Español: Curso abierto para hablantes de inglés que deseen mejorar su español" using his exchange website The Mixxer to connect language learners with native speakers for mutual exchanges. There have been some attempts to compile lists of LMOOC providers and available courses,Perifanou, Maria A. & Economides, A. A. (2014). MOOCs for Foreign Language Learning. An effort to explore and evaluate the first practices. Paper presented at the Conference INTED 2014: 8th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. but it seems like an impossible task to keep abreast of the constant changes in the MOOC panorama. Furthermore, LMOOCs seem to have received recently attention from governmental institutions and there is one European project that specifically focuses on LMOOCs, namely the LangMOOC project , Republished with revisions as as well as others, such as the ECO project, which include LMOOCs in their catalogue.
Architectonics In order to be effective, Read (2015) argues that LMOOCs require a set of tools and technologies that are appropriate for students to train the relevant receptive and productive language skills as they would in real world communicative situations. The possibilities for such technological mediation depend on the type of LMOOC proposed. There are several types of courses identified in the literature, but the two most common ones are cMOOCs and xMOOCs. Also available in DOCX format. The former, inspired by the notions of open education (techniques and resources), do not run on a single platform (but are distributed across many), promote immersion and interaction. The latter usually represent a continuation of other types of e-Learning courses that institutions have undertaken and, therefore, have a similar course structure, following standard face-to-face educational models.
For LMOOCs based upon an xMOOC platform, the resources and tools available for students typically include: textual materials in the form of Web pages, structured PDF files or URLs to content outside the platform, audiovisual recordings (often developed and stored on social video sites such as YouTube or Vimeo), tasks and exercises such as closed multiple-choice tests that are the basic evaluation mechanism, open answers, for example, based upon free writing, which can be compared to model answers or evaluated using peer-to-peer correction and, lastly, forums that represent a key component for learners to interact and practice mediated communication in the target language, providing a valuable mechanism for students to help each other and answers their peers' questions. For LMOOCs based upon the cMOOC model, a range of online Web 2.0 tools can be used so as to enable students to undertake the remixing, repurpose and co-create content and interaction, promoting the community nature of collaborative and social learning. xMOOC activities are typically highly structured and may not, as such, provide students with the communicative opportunity required to use what has just been seen and/or heard in an open and flexible way, including fine-grained feedback of different and complementary types. However, conversely, the often unstructured and constantly changing nature of cMOOCs together with, as Brennan (2014) notes, the cognitive load related to the sheer volume of information, number of tweets, posts, etc., available; the varying degrees of difficulty of activities (with little if any guidance available); and the need to use different tools and platforms, etc., can offer learners additional difficulties. Current research (Sokolik, 2014) attempts to combine the benefits of both types of model.
New student and instructor profiles and roles Castrillo de Larreta-Azelain (2014), being one of the first published papers that focuses on the roles, competences and methodological strategies of teachers in LMOOCs, on the basis of empirical research, identifies their main roles from a theoretical and practical standpoint. The proposed framework links to Salmon's theoretical tutoring model (Salmon, 2003) and is based on Hampel & Stickler's skills pyramid, (Hampel & Stickler, 2005) although focusing on Crompton's framework, (Crompton, 2009) which includes the three major sets of online language teaching: technology, pedagogy and evaluation.
The author's proposed model for redefining the teacher's role in this area is designed according to the different stages present in a LMOOC. The main task of the teaching teams in LMOOCs is shifted almost completely to the design and elaboration of the course before it actually takes place. It is argued that the instructional design necessary for the course requires a systematic, sequential plan based on Mastery Learning that consists of four steps. Moreover, the application of heuristic strategies to help present and transmit the contents of the course is suggested.
In LMOOCs, teachers need to become curators, facilitators, leaders and administrators, solving problems, suggesting complementary material, moderating forums, motivating students, and overseeing the whole learning experience during the course. Finally, before, during, and after the LMOOC, instructors are also researchers, collectors, and analyzers of learners' data.
As for students, Anderson et al.(2014)Anderson, A., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J. y Leskovec, J. (2014). Engaging with massive online courses. In WWW'14 Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World Wide Web. New York: ACM. 687-698. identify five different possible roles that MOOC participants can adopt:
"1. Viewers, who primarily watch lectures, handing in few – if any – assignments. 2. Solvers, who mainly hand in assignments for a grade, viewing few – if any – of the audiovisual materials. 3. All-rounders, those who balance the watching of the videos with the handing in of assignments. 4. Collectors, who mostly download lectures, handing in a few assignments. Unlike the viewers, they may or may not be actually watching the lectures. 5. Bystanders, those who registered for the course but may not even log in at all."
Accessibility MOOCs are examples of the evolution of e-Learning environments towards a more revolutionary computer and mobile-based scenario along with social technologies that will lead to the emergence of new kinds of learning applicationsKop, R., & Bouchard, P. (2011). The role of adult educators in the age of social media. Digital education: Opportunities for social collaboration, 61-80.De Waard I., Gallagher M.S., Zelezny-Green R., Czerniewicz L., Downes S., Kukulska-Hulme A. & Willems J.; (2014) Challenges for conceptualizing EU MOOC for vulnerable learner groups. Proceedings of the eMOOCs 2014 Conference. Edited by P.A.U. Education (Laussane, Switzerland). 33-42. that enhance communication and collaboration processes.Kukulska-Hulme, A. & Jones, C. (2011). The next generation: design and the infrastructure for learning in a mobile and networked world. In: Olofsson, A. D., and Lindberg, J. Ola (Eds.). Informed Design of Educational Technologies in Higher Education: Enhanced Learning and Teaching. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference (an Imprint of IGI Global). 57–78. These applications should take advantage of the unique conditions of mobility and the ubiquity of Internet access, exploring successful actions for education. However, the access to MOOC platforms still present barriers, there is also a lack of accessibility on the learning resources, the communicating tools, and even less personalized user interfaces. All these issues present definitively barriers that add extra difficulties, such as the need to develop specific digital or even social skills for students with functional diversity.