The use of MOOCs for professional development of translators

Abstract

A Massive Open Online Course has attracted a lot of attention in the last couple of years. This article deals with use of MOOCs as a resource for professional development of translator skills. MOOCs offer self-study and self-paced models that can be used as a resource for translators’ autonomous learning. MOOCs can increase the translators’ subject-matter expertise. The emergence and use of MOOCs for translator’s professional development is still uncommon, but on the verge of gaining a foothold. The aim of this paper is to review current trends in MOOCs in Europe and the U.S. in comparison with the Russian Federation. The paper contemplates the benefits of using MOOCs for professional development of translators. We offer a reflection on creation and utilization of the online courses for translators designed for the first time on Udemy platform in the Russian Federation, at the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (Herzen University). This paper further discusses the preliminary findings related to MOOCs effectiveness of learning outcomes and its impact on translators and calls for more practical studies and explorative research.