Teaching English through Online Courses

YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology English Philology Chair BACHELOR’s DEGREE THESIS Teaching English through Online Courses STUDENT: Grigor Baghdasaryan SUPERVISOR: Naira Martirosyan CONTENTS Introduction 3 CHAPTER 1 6 The History of Distance Learning 6 CHAPTER 2 11 2.1 Online learning: Aims and perspectives 11 2.2 MOODLE as one of the best-in-class platforms for teaching 16 CHAPTER 3 22 Online Courses at Yerevan State University 22 Conclusion 27 Bibliography 30 Introduction Because of everlasting development of the World and the lack of free time it brings to, people sometimes find it difficult to arrange their time for learning. For hundreds of years, people think about cutting the barrier of time, place and cost in favor of getting educated, so the need of distance learning became vital. During the years, more and more ways of distance learning emerged. The main reasons for never-ending thoughts about ideal distance learning were being cost-effective being not geographically limited to a certain place being schedule - friendly accommodating different styles of learning using a variety of delivery methods Distance education traces its origins to mid-19th century Europe and the United States. It has a long history and there are several types available today, including: Correspondence Courses: conducted through regular mail with little interaction. Telecourses: where content is delivered via radio or television broadcast. CD-ROM Courses: where the student interacts with static computer content. Online Learning: Internet-based courses offered synchronously and/or asynchronously. Mobile Learning: by means of devices such as cellular phones, PDAs and digital audio players (iPods, MP3 players). The pioneers of distance education used the best technology of their day, the postal system, to open educational opportunities to people who wanted to learn but were not able to attend conventional schools. People who most benefited from such correspondence education included those with physical disabilities, women who were not allowed to enroll in educational institutions open only to men, people who had jobs during normal school hours, and those who lived in remote regions where schools did not exist. This paper introduces the history of distance learning and its development over the years in US, Europe and USSR. Passing to online learning, which is the most known and used type of distance learning today, we introduced some of the approaches of modern pedagogy to online courses and what specialists of the sphere suggest to achieve a good online course. We also studied how Armenian universities use online courses and held our own study among the students of Yerevan State University to find out how well informed about distance learning students in Armenia are and how effective they find it. Then we introduce the electronic learning environment and Moodle as one of the best-in-class platforms for teaching and learning. We thoroughly present what the platform offers and how it can help to make effective easy-to-use courses. Thus in accordance with the task set, the paper consists of three chapters, introduction, three chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The first chapter starts from presenting early development of distance learning and continues describing the most significant types of it. Passing to our reality we presented modern distance learning, and online learning in particular. The second chapter aims at advantages and disadvantages of online learning, underlining best sides of it, also underlining the need for reinventing the classroom. The third chapter elaborates on the most used online platform, Moodle, and presents its perspectives and advantages. We also present the results of courses that have been experimented at Yerevan State University. Feedback from the learners is also presented in the chapter. Summing up the research, we present a short conclusion on what we were concentrated on, what were the main problems of online learning, how to effectively solve them. We also present our study with the help of students participated in online course implemented at Yerevan State University and the results of it. Finally, we present the bibliography we referenced. It includes most of the significant research papers and books about distance and online learning. As part of the research, we implemented an online courses’ website and asked some students to participate and give feedback in order to get a strong background how an online course is created. CHAPTER 1 The History of Distance Learning An Englishman, Isaac Pitman, who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand, is credited as an early pioneer of distance learning. He began teaching in Bath, England in 1840. Pitman taught a system of shorthand by mailing texts transcribed into shorthand on postcards and receiving transcriptions from his students in return for correction. The element of student feedback was a crucial innovation of Pitman's system. This scheme was made possible by the introduction of uniform postage rates across England in 1840. Students were instructed to copy short passages of the Bible and return them for grading via the new penny post system. American university level distance education began in 1874 at Illinois Wesleyan University where bachelor and graduate degrees could be obtained in absentia. The Chautauqua movement in about 1882 gave the popular push to correspondence education. The teaching of academic and vocational courses by correspondence became quite popular by 1900 and problems of quality and ethical practice came with the popularity. The National Home Study Council (NHSC) was formed in 1926 in part to address these issues. Accreditation of college and university distance programs fell to the National University Extension Association in 1915. The invention of educational radio in the 1920s and the advent of television in the 1940s created new important forms of communication for use in distance education. Educators used these new technologies to broadcast educational programs to millions of learners, thus extending learning opportunities beyond the walls of conventional teaching institutions. The development of reliable long-distance telephone systems in the early 1900s also increased the capacity of distance educators to reach new student populations. However, telephone systems never played a prominent role in education until the introduction of new teleconferencing technologies in the 1980s and 1990s. Teleconferencing systems made it possible for teachers to talk with, hear, and see their students in real time - that is, with no delays in the transmissions - even if they were located across the country or around the world. Distance education increasingly uses combinations of different communications technologies to enhance the abilities of teachers and students to communicate with each other. With the spread of computer-network communications in the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of people gained access to computers linked to telephone lines, allowing teachers and students to communicate in conferences via computers. Distance education also makes use of computer conferencing on the World Wide Web, where teachers and students present text, pictures, audio, and video. File sharing and communications tools like email, chats, audio and video conferencing are integral to the Internet model. Business and university level learners have used a conferencing method known as one-way video/two-way audio where television pictures that are transmitted to particular sites, where people can reply to the broadcasters with a telephone call-in system. Television pictures can also be transmitted in two directions simultaneously through telephone lines, so that teachers and students in one place can see and hear teachers and students in other places. This video-conferencing technology increasingly uses the Internet. Adult education in Russia began between the 40s and 60s of the 19th century with the foundation of “Literacy Committees” as well as with the development of Sunday-schools and the Zemstvo (земство) schools for adults in rural areas around 1860. According to the Soviet Encyclopedia (1967-78) approximately 27,500 Zemstvo schools had been established in Russia by 1911. Similar to the development of the so-called correspondence schools for instruction via letters in Germany (e.g., established by Gustav Langenscheidt, cf. Zawacki-Richter, 2011), it was private institutions that predominantly initiated the development of the first print-based distance classes in Russia throughout the second half of the 19th century (e.g., by the Society for the Advancement of Technical Sciences and the Society of Community Colleges). Many evening schools (“evening education”) were founded around the same time (Rosen, Gardner, & Keppel, 1965:3). The three basic types of instruction programs offered by Soviet higher educational establishments were: regular day, or full-time study; part-time evening; and part-time extension-correspondence programs. Attempts to equate these programs with particular institutes produce a good deal of confusion. (de Witt, 1961:229) Substantial, large scale development in Soviet distance education has taken place since a decree of the USSR. In August 1926, the Councils of People’s Commissars made correspondence education a regular part of the higher education system. In 1927, a Central Institute for Correspondence Education was established and correspondence preparatory departments prepared young people for entering Communist universities. (Rosen, Gardner, & Keppel, 1965:6) To sum up, the need for being educated and lack of time made people think of alternative ways of getting educated. Distance learning with its different types made its way to people live. What refers to modern Armenia and educational and social life, here people should take the advantage of distance learning over the traditional institution-based learning because they have to work all day long and it becomes hard for them to attend university classes, as the majority of the universities in Armenia do not offer a flexible curriculum or evening classes. In this technologically developed era, it is becoming more and more crucial to find ways of transferring education to World Wide Web. As more and more people have access to the Internet, the need of online education increases. Online learning is the newest and most popular form of distance education today. Within the past decade, it has had a major impact on postsecondary education and the trend is only increasing. More and more universities all over the world offer online courses free of charge or at least for an affordable price. In our reality, there are some Armenian universities (Armenian State Pedagogical University after Khachatur Abovyan, Public Administration Academy of the Republic of Armenia, etc.), that undertake some humble steps to provide some optional online courses. Some foreign universities in Armenia (American University of Armenia) do offer online courses and interactive platforms for preparing homework and taking exams that are massively used by the students and in contrast with Armenian universities, it is mandatory to use these platforms for foreign university students. We carried out a study among 120 Armenian students where we present how students of the age group of 18-20 are informed about online learning and whether they believe in effectiveness of online learning. Study among 120 Armenian students showed that 64 of them has little or no information about online learning and only the rest 56 students know what online courses are. Below is a chart showing detailed information how well students at Yerevan State University are informed about online learning and what they think. The study shows, that most of the students believe in the effectiveness of online learning and vast majority of them express their wish to try online learning. As a fact, most of the students also think, that online courses are more interesting than standard traditional lessons. According to Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG) and Online Learning Consortium (OLC) studies in the territory the United States (Babson Study: Distance Education Enrollment Growth Continues), online enrollment continues to grow at rates faster than ever before. What is more interesting, the majority of academic leaders believe that online learning quality is already equal or superior to face-to-face instruction. In the United States, for example, federal data shows 5,257,379 students now taking one or more distance education courses, that is an increase of 189,187. The proportion of chief academic leaders report that online learning is critical to their long-term strategy, that reached a new high of 70.8%. CHAPTER 2 2.1 Online Learning: Aims and Perspectives As we have already mentioned, online learning is education that takes place over the Internet. It is often referred to as “e-learning” among other terms. E-learning, in contrast to all the other methods of learning represents a virtual classroom that is available on the Internet and can be accessed from everywhere and anytime students wish. Online learning is catalyzing a pedagogical shift in how we teach and learn. There is a clear-cut difference between the standard lecturing where the lecturer stands on the top of the audience and the students sit on the bottom. Online learning transforms passive lecturing to a more interactive one and passive students become more interactive and collaborative. Here students and instructors co-create the learning process. The Instructor’s role is changing from the “sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side.” Online distance learning meets the needs of an ever-growing number of students who cannot or prefer not to participate in traditional classroom courses. These learners include those unable to attend traditional classes, who cannot find a particular class at their chosen institution, who live in remote locations, who work full-time and can only study at or after work, and those who simply prefer to learn independently. Online courses provide an excellent method of course delivery unbound by time or location allowing for accessibility to instruction at anytime from anywhere. Learners find the online environment a convenient way to fit education into their busy lives. The ability to access a course from any computer with Internet access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week is a tremendous incentive for many of today’s students. Speaking of availability and flexibility of online courses it is worth mentioning that online courses can partially be implemented in a standard classroom to do some exercises in class or to learn a new lesson via interactive methods online courses give. It is also possible to do some exercises in class using online platforms with interactive smart boards that are already an inseparable part of state-of-the-art classroom. Some of the main advantages of online courses include: Convenience: 24/7 access from any online computer; accommodates busy schedules. Enhanced Learning: Research shows increased depth of understanding and retention of course content; discussions that are more meaningful; emphasis on writing skills, technology skills, and life skills like time management, independence, and self-discipline. Leveling of the immediate participation A significant change: Students can take more time to think and reflect before communicating; shy students tend to thrive online; anonymity of the online environment. Interaction: Increased student-to-teacher and student-to-student interaction and discussion; a more student-centered learning environment; less passive listening and more active learning; a greater sense of connectedness, synergy. Innovative Teaching: Student-centered approaches; increased variety and creativity of learning activities; address different learning styles; changes and improvements can translate to on-ground courses as well Improved Administration: Time to examine student work more thoroughly; ability to document and record online interactions; ability to manage grading online. Savings: Accommodate more students; increased student satisfaction = higher retention and fewer repeats. Maximize Physical Resources: Lessen the demand on limited campus infrastructure; decrease congestion on campus and parking lots. Outreach: Give students options; reach new student markets; appeal to current students’ thus increasing enrollments. From the teacher’s perspective, teaching online can be both hard and enjoyable work simultaneously. Teachers need to be competent in using online learning platforms, working with text documents, slideshows, PDF documents and other types of multimedia. This does not mean that teachers need to have some technical skills, as they are usually not required to solve problems of technical side. It will not always be as easy, as transferring available written or in-mind material to online environment. The first step in planning online course is to reinvent and re-conceptualize existing courses. Online courses do not function just like face-to-face classes, and designing the online course is not a simple matter of putting the material on the web. Designing online course will likely challenge pedagogical mettle. Online assessments should be thought over and built on the basis of standard material while keeping in mind the need of customization to fit online needs. One of the problems for teachers is to create such kind of assessments that would require analytic thinking and will not be easy to cheat. Of course, online testing also presents another chance for cheaters to try to game the system. Most online quizzes are meant to be taken at home or outside of class. Students can download the questions and print them out. They can take the tests open-book or with other students. Though, Moodle is able to prevent this situation by countering these strategies, making it even difficult and more trouble than they are worth. If the correct answers are displayed, students can print the results page and share it with their friends. Alternatively, they can simply print the questions themselves directly from the quiz. The key feature of Moodle that discourages this behavior is the option to randomize the question and answer order. It makes the printouts a lot less useful. Creating larger question banks and giving tests with random subsets is also an effective strategy. If there are included enough questions in the test and the time to take the quiz is short enough, students will not have time to look up all the answers. One of the first comprehensive studies, which attempt to address the pedagogical aspects of online language teaching, is by Hampel and Stickler (2005). Based on several years’ experience in teaching languages online and training online tutors, they identify seven key competences necessary for successful online language teaching and present them in a pyramid. In their framework, the basic competences (the three lower levels of the pyramid) are issues to do with hardware and software (Compton 2009). Only level four and five seem to relate to teaching pedagogy. At level four – online socialization - they explain that “… socialization and community building in an online environment requires far more different skills than for the face-to-face classroom, there is no guarantee that even the most jovial and well-liked tutor of face-to-face course can become a successful online teacher at this level.”. At level five - facilitating communicative competence – they reiterate the value of “task design” and “tutor intervention” and see that as the ways to achieve “online interaction”. However, advice like that proves to be vague and general, lacking in detail for teachers.  Talking about the best sides of online teaching to the ability to get necessary information on each or the whole group of learners – be it a grade on a particular subject, examination, or percentage of homework done by them. Having access to all kinds of data stored due to activity of learners, would also be possible to gather any other needed information comparing the results one to another and so on. Talking about learners, the minimum requirement to participate in an online course is access to a computer, the Internet, and the motivation to succeed in a non-traditional classroom. Ideally, students enrolled in an online course need to be competent in using computers and navigating the Internet. Those considering the negative aspects of distance learning say that the asynchronous nature of online education takes some getting used to, moreover conducting a seamless discussion might not be possible because it is performed at various levels and speeds at different places. If a student is not familiar with technology, he might find it difficult to follow a discussion. Delayed responses and pending messages may further hinder group performance. Challenge lies in understanding the technology in order to apply it to create new and more effective learning situations.  2.2 MOODLE as One of the Best-in-Class Platforms for Teaching Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an Open Source online learning platform used by most of the leading educational institutions and private websites providing with online learning materials. Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators to create quality online courses. Such online learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). A VLE usually combines multiple tools and activities for teaching and for organizing learning. In contrast to online providers that offer a single blog, wiki or open, public forums and chats, the Moodle VLE combines all such communication tools in one space. Moodle presents an excellent platform for resources and communication tools. Martin Dougiamas, a computer scientist and educator who deeply believes that a CMS should be created by an educator and not by an engineer, created it. Martin’s background in education led him to adopt social constructionism as a core theory behind Moodle. This is revolutionary, as most CMS systems have been built around tool sets, not pedagogy. Most commercial CMS systems are tool-centered, whereas Moodle is learning-centered. Social constructionism is based on the idea that people learn best when they are engaged in a social process of constructing knowledge through the act of constructing an artifact for others. Moodle is an open source platform, which means everyone can make changes to meet demand of their own, is built on a sound educational philosophy, and has a huge community that supports and develops it. It can compete with the big commercial systems in terms of feature sets and is easy to extend. One of the features of Moodle worth noting is the interface. While toolcentric CMSs give you a list of tools as the interface, Moodle builds the tools into an interface that makes the learning task central. It is possible to organize a Moodle course by week, topic, or social arrangement. Additionally, while other CMSs support a content model that encourages instructors to upload a lot of static content, Moodle focuses on tools for discussion and sharing artifacts. The focus is not on delivering information; it is on sharing ideas and engaging in the construction of knowledge. Moodle’s design philosophy makes this a uniquely teacher-friendly package that represents the first generation of educational tools that are truly useful. The practical advantage of using a VLE like Moodle is that users (learners and teachers) only need one login and need to get used to only one user interface. The other advantage is the protection of users and their data. It is possible to compare a Moodle platform to a school with many classrooms and many classes. One can access the Moodle platform and especially the classroom (i.e. individual Moodle course) only by being registered and using known student details. Others, i.e. outsiders, usually cannot access such a protected course. However, it is also possible to make a course that would be available to anyone, even without registering on the website and being authenticated as “guests” The course being available online, has the advantage that is can be accessed by its users at any time and from anywhere in the world. Therefore, it is also particularly strong in supporting learner autonomy as well as collaboration between learners in different parts of the world. Moodle offers a big variety of such so-called “activity” modules that focus on using the individual activities for teaching in particular. All the “activity” modules aim to make learning process and communication on the platform easy and clear, as well as available on different kinds of devices to ensure maximum possibilities. Taking into account the experience of many universities that implement online courses and research of professionals there are key questions to consider when planning an online course and providing guidelines for effective instructional practices. It is advisable to firstly integrate technologies into face-to-face courses and become familiar with the online teaching environment before taking on the challenge of teaching mostly or totally online (Palloff & Pratt 2001). Online teaching is a viable option for courses that focus on the development of students' cognitive abilities — ranging from acquisition of information to evaluation (Bloom, 1956). Such courses usually teach concepts and principles and engage students in discussions, debates, writing papers or reports, and problem solving. These teaching and learning activities can often work well online because they do not always require close observation or face-to-face interaction. Unlike some CMSs that force teachers into one format, Moodle provides with a number of options for the general format of your course. It gives you the choice to order courses chronologically by week, conceptually by topic, or socially with a big forum as the central organizing principle. One of the most used activities is forum module, where students and teachers can exchange ideas by posting comments or discussing questions. Forums are an important tool in the Moodle toolbox. They are the primary method for students to communicate with the teacher and each other. Every time learners get a question or need someone’s help, they can post the questions to forums, either creating a new section or commenting their question to one of the existing topics related to their problem. Then people who are confident in their knowledge, as well as teachers can help them to solve their problems, ask questions and discuss previously or upcoming topic of their lessons. This always helps people to both be in touch with other learners and see what others think on the same question. Social constructivism is all about discussion and negotiated meaning. Because forums are asynchronous, students can take their time composing replies. They can draft and rewrite until they are happy with the results instead of feeling under pressure to respond immediately. A lot of research indicates that more students are willing to participate in an asynchronous forum than are willing to speak up in class. For students whose primary language is not that of the course, people with communicative disabilities, forums offer a chance to take as much time as they need to formulate a reasonable reply. Other students, who might be afraid of embarrassing themselves by making a mistake when they speak up in class, can double-check their responses before they send them in. The asynchronous nature of the forums creates many opportunities to create entirely new activities that are difficult in a classroom setting. In forums, everyone is free to express their thoughts and support them while other people highlight pros and cons of the question discussed. Expressing thoughts also helps to develop individual thinking. A chat is used for live (synchronous) written exchanges. A session can be moderated by a teacher and framed by a task or it can be used for ‘random’ communication. Concerning organization, the live nature of chats means that the time for a chat session has to be arranged in advance and all participants of the chat meeting have to be online at the same time. This is useful especially for learners who got some difficulties in using the platform, or to communicate to the same group members in order to do some group work activities. Wikis on the platform are another tool for collaborative writing and editing within an online “document” and for many other collaborative or cooperative activities. The most famous wiki is probably Wikipedia. Wiki gives the possibilities to students to work individually or in pairs in a wiki. To make organization and the work process easier, students can be assigned a special role for the writing and editing process (e.g. “author”, “chief editor”, “grammar guru”, “layouter”, etc.) To collect written or “digital” materials or files from students, there is a tool named “assignment activity”. Instead of handing in their homework on paper, they can deliver it digitally, that is students upload their homework directly to the website, and the teachers get it instantly. One of the most significant options of the platform is the ability to link anti plagiarism tools to the platform, which enables both the student and the teacher to see the percentage of plagiarism in the uploaded paper. If the student decides to make changes in the paper and upload it again, it will be possible for the teacher to compare all the uploaded versions of the document. All the assignments handed in through Moodle can only be accessed by the teacher, not by the other students. This ensures that the students cannot modify homework once submitted and the results of the tests would be private and accessible only to the learner it is intended for. Teachers and the students can create a glossary within a Moodle course or for an entire platform. Several glossaries can exist within one course and there are different ways for browsing the glossary: words can be automatically linked (the so-called ‘auto-linking’ feature). So, whenever they show up in a course, clicking on them will lead to the respective glossary entry. A Moodle glossary can range from anything of a short vocabulary list to something like an encyclopedia, including pictures or other additional materials which will also help to provide the learners a peace of useful and trustful information without leaving the platform. After a few courses, most of the common words will be linked to their definitions thus making the learning process even easier. With the use of Moodle’s “games”, non-standard module learners can practice gained knowledge through eight different games: Hangman, Crossword, Cryptex, Millionaire, Sudoku, The hidden picture, Snakes and Ladders, Book with questions. Moodle games are, in particular, a very good way to practice vocabulary or also some grammar structures. They can also be set up for pupils to work on some of the materials at home or as an introduction into a new topic. The way the game activities are built, they are also very well suited for the use with younger learners. Feedback on performance is a critical part of a learning environment, and assessment is one of the most important activities in education. As teachers cannot tell what is going on inside students’ heads, it is important to find ways to demonstrate what learners understand and what they do not. A well-designed test, even a multiple-choice test, can give valuable information about students’ misconceptions. If the feedback is rapid enough, it can also be a critical tool for students to gauge their own performance and help them become more successful. Moodle’s quiz module is one of the most complex pieces of the system. A large number of options and tools are added to the quiz engine, making it extremely flexible. It is possible to create quizzes with different question types, randomly generate quizzes from pools of questions, and allow students to re-take quizzes multiple times, and have the computer score everything. These features open up a number of strategies that usually are not practical with paper based testing. It is hard enough to score one batch of quizzes, and nearly impossible to score it 10 times for each student. Online quizzes are designed to be graded instantly. They are a great tool for giving feedback on students’ performance and for gauging their comprehension of materials. Gathering and reviewing assignments online assignment submissions are an easy way to track and grade student assignments. In addition to this, it is possible to grade student assignments online, increases student motivation and performance. Recording grades in online gradebook gives students up-to-date and motivating information about their performances in the course. Summing up we can say, that Moodle provides a unique experience of teaching/learning through effective tools that help people to be involved in certain activities and develop their knowledge.  CHAPTER 3 Online Courses at Yerevan State University During the research for this paper, we set up two private Moodle courses for Student Scientific Society students of Yerevan State University at the faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology. Most of the students participating in these courses were not familiar with online learning, though most of them were competent in using a computer and the Internet. As all the participating students studied English, we set up the whole platform in English and the courses were introduced in English as well. Students were asked to use the website and a course and to give feedback to their experience. The website can be found at http://moodle.webstardesign.org As we mentioned earlier, online learning can both be blended with classroom learning and solely. The first course was blended with classroom lessons. The topic was “Exploring British Culture” and besides oral representation of the topic each day we introduced some videos about the culture of Britain, language, weather, theatre and literature and then the speaker from the video asked some questions and the learners had to give answers. The questions were shown on the board and the answers were given on interactive smart board. Students had to drag and drop the right answer to the right place. Each student answered a question and then all the students saw the right answer and the description to the right answer if it was not answered correctly. Then students were given another task: they were to complete sentences from the speech of the speaker of the video with missing words via dragging and dropping the words on the smart board. Again, all the activities were done on the board and all the students were able to participate. After each exercise, an oral discussion was held and the students expressed their thoughts on the topic. Collecting the feedback from students participating in this blended lesson gave the following results. 17 of 21 students felt confident using interactive methods during the class. Although there were 4 students who didn’t feel confident being part of an interactive lesson, all the students think that interactive methods make lessons much more attractive, interesting and challenging the topics that were studied showed their effectiveness as students associated the already studied material thing with the visual part of the lesson, which helped to remember nearly everything that was discussed. When students were asked whether they would like to use interactive methods during classes or not, 20 of 21 students agreed, saying that it would help to learn the new material in a new and interesting way, and only one student was not sure on that. That is, the majority of the students expressed their wish to learn in a blended classroom. Below we show a chart with the above presented data. This kind of blended lesson would not actually give the opportunity to evaluate students and give marks but it is an effective way of interactive student-centered lesson that would always keep the learner interested and would make them participate during the whole lesson.  The second course was wholly implemented online. The topic was the same and the only difference was that students met online, without the need to be in one place at the same time. When starting to design and develop the course, using free materials for a standard classroom gathered from the Internet, the primary concern was: how do we transfer the traditional classroom to cyberspace? This should always be done guided by professional expertise - competence in the language and culture, pedagogical knowledge and skills, and experience in teaching the language. At first, we decided that the first and the last tasks would be to transfer the standard materials designed for classroom to the cyber world. We believed that once the traditional classroom has been moved to the cyber world, technologies would somehow do the trick and take care of everything. The focus is therefore on the things that usually happen in a traditional classroom. Our first task was to move the textbooks online using PowerPoint with pictures, sounds, culture and grammar notes, etc. Below is presented the list of the teaching components, and the methods and tools employed in these two online courses. Teaching Components Methods / Tools Lessons PowerPoint Audio and video files Found from YouTube New words and expressions Interactive smart board Online community Discussions Forums and blogs Group work Wikis Assessment Blackboard, Wikis, forums This course had 10 participants. The course provided them with new materials each week and learners were free to arrange their learning hours, as the course was always available. During the first two weeks, some students took the course on the first day of the week, when new assignments were added, though some preferred to learn the material during the whole week, visiting the platform for a short time every day. As a part of the course, we paid great attention to students’ pronunciation of new words, thus making it difficult to check that orally on fully online course. One of the difficulties was the need for the students to send (upload) voice recordings for pronunciation that were necessary to be checked orally. After some work, we found out, that the platform also has a recorder built-in, so learners do not need to upload any file. All they need is to have a microphone. As a result, the knowledge base was generally the same for all the students, but those, who visited the website during the week, participated in forums, discussions and optional group works that helped them to gain the same-level knowledge about the topic thus giving less time to the course itself. If we compare the results of letter experiments with those of blended one, we see that students learning online had the opportunity to revise one and the same thing for a few times, as it was stored and recorded data on the Internet and had the opportunity to once again learn what was misunderstood or given a wrong answer to. It is worth mentioning, that instructors were always online to help learners with problems in using the platform. Because of the small number of participant, forums had not always been active, though learners who posted some questions got answers to these questions and sometimes participated to other discussions. During each week, students were asked to write a short review of the week’s course, which, in its manner, created some kind of discussion too. Taking into consideration the fact, that in this particular case we also tried to evaluate each student, generally evaluating answers to exercises, participation level for the week (how much of the assessment given for the week is done) students passed 80% competition level we set beforehand. In this case again, students were asked to give feedback on what they think about online course after each week they passed. The result is as follows: All the participants found online courses useful and interesting. Three of the students said, that it was hard for them to use the online course for the first time without help. It is notable, that all the students expressed their wish to participate in new courses. To the question, whether they liked the idea of transforming standard classrooms into online classes, 6 out of 10 students hesitated to answer, whereas three of the remaining four students were sure, that online courses could not yet kill standard classrooms. Though the research is still going on and needs some efforts to activate the interest of participants, in general, it shows that the course given is effective in terms of competition and interest. Students are mostly interested in participating in online courses. In order to promote online courses in Yerevan State University, we collaborate with Student Scientific Society of the university to implement online courses on everyday basis and many young researchers express their willingness to create courses on different topics. Conclusion In this paper, we have presented the history of distance learning, how it emerged, what the main idea of distance learning is and how it has transformed over the years taking into consideration the needs of people in different periods and concentrated on the most modern type of distance learning, online learning in particular. We have discussed why online learning is an important and integral part of modern education and introduced the possibilities and opportunities it gives. Talking about the effectiveness of online courses we have stated, that it needs to be a reliably, always accessible and secure platform to ensure the convenience of learners. One of the great debates on online learning has been whether it is “better” than traditional educational (i.e., face-to-face) formats. Whether students learn online as much as they do in a traditional classroom. Russell’s (1999) “no significant differences” findings shaped a lot of the early rhetoric concerning this issue. More importantly, rates as “essential” or “important” do not differ meaningfully between online and face-to-face courses. Other studies found statistically significant differences between online and face-to-face courses on direct measures of student outcomes, with older students in online or hybrid courses faring slightly better than their traditional counterparts (Means, Toyama, 2009:14 - 17). In the search of a platform that provides all the mentioned above possibilities and is aimed to provide “open” education to everyone, we found on a platform called Moodle for E-learning. Moodle is a great tool for tutors, because it is a platform for creating and saving teaching material easily and a collaborative online platform for teachers and students for learning together. Besides creating courses, it is also very useful for joining the online communities to keep yourself updated with the world and to know a circle of scholars that will truly encircle the globe. Thus, the implementation of the information and communication technology in education with e-learning through Moodle allows improving effectiveness of the education. E-learning allows better cooperation among the learners, the tutors and the students. The accessibility, usability and student collaborative learning can be improved and higher motivation among the students and the teachers can be achieved through E-learning. Although the use of these technology places great emphasis on the autonomy of students' work and development, in Armenian universities it is not common to use online learning. Our experience seems to indicate that traditional classroom cannot be easily replaced. In reality, students do not seem to consider online courses as “classroom”, and teachers in fact have little control over the fact whether it is being used or not. The main conclusions are: Most Armenian universities do not use Moodle as a content repository; Most students would like to participate in an online learning. Moodle gives the possibility to strengthen the already gained information via different activities, such as chats, wikis, assignments and forums; Most students believe that effectiveness of online learning is on a higher level due to age we are living in. Despite the context of the research, recent studies have been reaching similar conclusions about how online learning and, Moodle in particular, is used. The results stress the need for online courses at universities, as the new teaching approach is effective, attractive, budget-friendly, it is available everywhere and every time. As shown by the results of this study, changes to learning practice are required and students are interested in modern ways of getting knowledge. This study is a good starting point and a diagnostic tool for institutions, where students express their wish to take online courses on such educational environments as Moodle. The intent here is not to try to settle the question of which approach is better. We want to emphasize that there is a difference in the quality of online courses when proper design steps are not taken or best practices are ignored. In the words of Bernard “effective distance education depends on the provision of pedagogical excellence”. We hope that further research of this ongoing study will be able to suggest new lines of action and important features which would change universities, teachers’ and learners’ experiences. Bibliography Abercrombie, D., Elements of General Phonetics, Edinburgh University Press, 1967. 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