Developing an online course for teaching listening in the software learning environment Moodle

Abstract

The article considers the development of an online course for teaching listening in the software learning environment Moodle. The characteristics of online learning are discussed and analyzed. The authors provide an extensive explanation of the nature of online learning, software learning environments and platforms, and Web 2.0 technology. Advantages of every underlying technology are discussed with the view to apply them to language teaching and learning. It was shown that the technologies alongside communicative approach contribute to the effectiveness of both language teaching and learning. Analysis involved feedback from both students and teachers and was a matter of weighing up all opinions expressed, taking into account all relevant aspects of the issues and discussing all the points raised by the research. On the basis of the data, the authors conclude that the experiment showed that language learning and teaching benefited greatly from the introduction of new online technologies and video-blogs. The authors provide a rigorous methodology for developing an online course using video-blog technology. The final point of the paper is the conclusion in which the authors claim that these novel learning technologies possess an enormous potential for effective language teaching and learning. The final point to stress is that the rapidly changing world requires educators to apply new information technologies.