Abstract—The article provides a quantitative analysis of
online language courses located on such online platforms as
Coursera, Udemy, Edx and Alison. Communicative and
linguistic competencies are necessary characteristics of an
active citizen who interacts effectively with the surrounding
society. Also, in the conditions when the internationalization
processes are increasing knowledge of a foreign language
becomes very important. Massive open online courses (MOOC)
are considered to be a promising and powerful means of
language training. Today, they have combined the possibilities
provided by the Internet, the quality content, and the best
teaching practices. We have found that MOOC can be used for
distance and blended learning, as well as in the process of
self-education. When designing online language courses for
MOOC you should consider certain criteria and requirements.
The topics of the online courses, level of complexity, quality
educational content, practical orientation, interactivity,
availability of feedback, etc. are of special importance. We
found that the analyzed platforms have several identical
functional features: multilingual interface, a possibility to
choose the language of courses, a possibility to obtain a
certificate, the availability of links to related courses, the
availability of headings, a possibility to search for courses by
keywords. In total, we identified 5,159 online courses for
learning 21 languages. The Udemy platform has the largest
number of online language courses (4,270 courses). The most
popular languages appeared to be English (1,760 courses),
Spanish (544 courses), French (451 courses), and Chinese (450
courses). The least popular languages, which are represented by
only one online course, are Swedish, Latin, Noongar, and
Tibetan. We found that such online platforms as Coursera and
Edx provide courses that give users an opportunity to obtain a
professional certificate, specialization, or a degree.
Index Terms—MOOC, online courses, language training,
language.
Tetiana Sharova and Alina Zemlianska are with the Department of Social
Sciences and Humanities, Dmytro Motornyi Tavria State Agrotechnological
University, Melitopol, Ukraine (e-mail: sharovatanya83@gmail.com,
uzunkoleva@ukr.net).
Ostap Bodyk is with the English Philology Department, Mariupol State
University, Mariupol, Ukraine (e-mail: ostapb74@gmail.com).
Valentyna Kravchenko is with the Department of Ukrainian Literature,
Zaporizhzhya National University, Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine (e-mail:
Kravchenko_v_o@i.ua).
Natalia Nisanoglu is with the Department of Foreign Languages, Dmytro
Motornyi Tavria State Agrotechnological University, Melitopol, Ukraine
(e-mail: natalia.nisanoglu@tsatu.edu.ua).
Cite: Tetiana Sharova, Ostap Bodyk, Valentyna Kravchenko, Alina Zemlianska, and Natalia Nisanoglu, "Quantitative Analysis of MOOC for Language Training," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 421-429, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).