Italian A1 class in VLE : moodle experience

The aim of the paper is to share the teacher’s personal experience in creating language courses in a virtual learning environment (in this case the Moodle platform). The author’s A1 Italian blended language course at Vytautas Magnus University has been appointed by the Institute for Innovative Studies a 98% compatibility degree with a distance learning course. This result is to be regarded as an outstanding achievement because of the nature of the subject. It is implied that a purely theoretical subject (albeit with practical activities), as for instance a course in geometry or astronomy or even Latin, requires minor human input in comparison to a communicative language course, given that the latter is more dedicated to developing interactive skills than simply transferring knowledge. In Italian A1, the main purpose of Moodle is to supply students with all the course material based on a weekly structure alongside the detailed thematic content which spans 5 units. Many features of Moodle, such as discussion forums, instant messages, online quizzes and various types of question-based exercises are not used to a large extent, because every single study activity (including extra lectures on grammar themes) has been filmed in a real classroom of students and uploaded on the web for a more simple and straightforward learning processUžsienio kalbų, lit. ir vert. s. katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta