Umbrella Newsletter # 60 - MOOCs
Dear Colleagues,
This Umbrella Newsletter will be devoted only to MOOCs, the buzz word of the past two
academic years.
“A massive open online course (MOOC) is a model for delivering learning content online to any
person who wants to take a course, with no limit on attendance”. You have heard about the most
famous Coursera https://www.coursera.org, Udacity https://www.udacity.com, UC Berkeley,
MIT, Harvard MOOCs.
Some of you took the initiative to try them on their own, some, like our colleague Mira
Bergelson , started their own courses https://www.coursera.org/instructor/mirabergelson
Are MOOCs as effective as we thought a year ago? We shared with you the following article in
Umbrella Newsletter # 58 http://www.npr.org/2013/12/31/258420151/the-online-educationrevolution-drifts-off-course to start a discussion.
This year we have started a small pilot project College Writing 2.3x MOO, run through
University of California at Berkeley with the help of alumni of various programs. The goal was
to ask alumni to become facilitators and to help their peers and/or students organize sessions that
would lead to the successful completion of the course. We will be discussing the results of this
project at the 20th NATE Conference in Voronezh (April 23-25).
And now the great news! The long awaited Shaping the Way We Teach English Massive Open
Online Course (MOOC) with the University of Oregon is open for registration! This MOOC is
designed for EFL educators, both those who are intending to pursue this field as a career and
those already working in the field who would like to revise and refresh their methods and
approaches. (Moreover, this course will help you master the American EFL terminology in
Methodology and will help you in the future use it in your own articles).
The course will be ideal for future teachers of English, for the crash courses, for those who
would like to be ready to write and publish their research on EFL Methodology in foreign
magazines. A few Russian teachers participated in this course in the past and the office paid for
their participation – they all found the course very interesting and useful.
The course will be offered in two sessions which can be taken independently.
Part 1 begins on April 7 and Part II on May 12th.
Registration for both courses is open now. Participants must go to the links below and enroll for
each course individually. They will need a valid email address to complete their enrollment.
This MOOC is free and open for all; there are no registration limitations. The first
assignment is due 11:59 pm Pacific time Saturday, April 12.
Part 1: The Landscape of English Language Teaching – Begins April 7
Enroll at: https://www.coursera.org/course/shaping1landscape





Week 1: Authentic materials to enhance student motivation
Week 2: Pair and group work for collaborative learning
Week 3: Critical and creative thinking to drive learning
Week 4: Learner feedback and assessment to evaluate student progress
Week 5: Language in context and using content to structure language learning
Part 2: Paths to Success in English Language Teaching – Begins May 12
Enroll at: https://www.coursera.org/course/shaping2paths





Week 1: Integrating skills and using tasks to motivate learners
Week 2: Alternative assessment to demonstrate language ability
Week 3: Incorporating individual learning differences in instruction
Week 4: Effective classroom management
Week 5: Reflective teaching
This is a university level introduction to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
(TESOL) Methods course for non-native English language speakers.
! If you plan to hold facilitated discussions for a group ( 5+ teachers or students) and meet
ideally every week or bi-weekly to discuss the progress of the course, to clarify issues raised in
the lectures or to conduct supplemental activities related to the current week’s topic, please send
an email to me at lena.lubnina@gmail.com and Natasha Fomenko at fomenkonv@state.gov
ASAP with basic info: name, position, affiliation, how many participants and the venue of
sessions. In the end we would provide you with certificate for your outstanding work.
Additional sources of information/guidance:
Here are some useful links for learning about how to facilitate sessions and for finding out the
latest info directly from the professor:


Facilitator’s Webinar on best practices: http://dosmaterialsdevelopment.adobeconnect.com/p6f5s825iql/
Facebook page for the course: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CWP2X/
And here is one more course: here is the link to register for the third module of the course on
Principles of Written Communication: https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyxcolwri2-3x-principles-1535 The course is scheduled to open on Tuesday, April 1 (at
approximately 4pm UTC). The first assignment will be due the following Tuesday and each
Tuesday after that.
Thank you
Elena