Natsuyo Suzuki

The Department of English developed curricula using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs') offered by universities in the UK and the US as an alternative programme during the Covid-19 to study abroad (credit recognition). As the MOOCs is designed as self-study tool by an individual learner, it was required to create a virtual mock situation of the classes in study abroad, where students engage in the activities (tasks) programmed by the course creators with watching videos, listening and reading assignments, quizzes and exchanges of opinions (chats) with other students from around the world in addition to classroom learning with real-life classmates and a teacher. This alternative programme, in which the teachers encouraged learner-oriented learning and collaborative learning, significantly improved students' ability to secure time for learning outside the classroom and their attitude towards learning, and their interest and deepening in the theme they learned, compared with the same questionnaire surveys in regular language classes. Moreover, it was found that the evaluation of the teachers was very high, which may be because the teachers were given the opportunity to explain their roles in advance.