From traditional classes to MOOCs – roles of language teachers

Iwona Mokwa-Tarnowska

Politechnika Gdańska, Centrum Języków Obcych


Abstract

Intensive teacher support is the major factor in e-learning being an effective learning and teaching environment. Different teacher’s roles are associated with the specific nature of the online educational process, which results from the adopted educational paradigm, instructive or constructivist, the number of participants, the course structure together with its resources and activities, as well as the subject matter of the e-learning programme or module. The teacher responsible for developing and supervising a massive open online course has to perform more varied activities and tasks than that working with small groups participating in an e-learning or blended learning programme. In the first case their work involves mainly pre-emptive support, in the second one both pre-emptive and many-layered responsive. Therefore their duties may include helping students solve not only their academic problems, but also non-academic ones. The paper shows how teacher support impacts the effectiveness of teaching and learning English during e-learning courses and modules for groups of a limited and unlimited number of participants.

Keywords:

e-learning, MOOC, support, language teacher, foreign language teaching

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Published
2016-12-30


Mokwa-Tarnowska, I. (2016) “From traditional classes to MOOCs – roles of language teachers”, Linguodidactica, 20, pp. 223–236. doi: 10.15290/lingdid.2016.20.16.

Iwona Mokwa-Tarnowska 
Politechnika Gdańska, Centrum Języków Obcych