MOOC DISCUSSION FORUMS - FIRST STEPS OF ACADEMIC

This study presents an attempt to integrate MOOC discussion forums posting into the curriculum of teaching English for specific purposes. Academic writing seems to be the least appreciated component of the ESP courses, which can be partially attributed to the fact that students lack natural environment for quasi-professional discussions on their major subject. Besides, writing lengthy academic papers presents a massive challenge for beginner students, both due to their level of English proficiency and insignificant expertise in the chosen discipline. However, writing in small chunks in the forum posting format appears manageable and even motivating. In this paper, we are presenting the results of a pedagogical experiment that took place at the Ecological Faculty of the RUDN University in November 2016-March 2017. 16 first-year students aged 18-19 were asked to participate in the experiment, registering for the MOOCs on environmental sciences and completing the tasks in the semi-flipped classroom mode. Apart from watching and reading the materials of the MOOCs they were specifically asked to write postings on the discussion forums and submit print-screens to the English instructor. Upon the completion of the experiment the students were asked to complete a survey on their reflections upon writing assignments. Besides, a small corpus of postings was compiled for further qualitative and quantitative analysis. The paper elaborates on the outcomes and challenges of using discussion forums posting in ESP classes and outlines the pedagogical effect of the experiment.