Online Asynchronous Learning English for Specific Purposes Terminology

Abstract

The pandemic and military actions in the country triggered our study in considering the challenges Ukrainian higher education faces referring asynchronous learning. We assume that the challenges are threefold – namely – psychological, technical (availability of means for providing asynchronous communication and technological (scientifically grounded methods of quality asynchronous learning). In our study the focus is on the methods of asynchronous learning specialized terminology. The background of the research was the study of the literature concerning benefits and limitations of asynchronous learning and implementing online courses into the learning process. The purpose of this research was to prove the effectiveness of asynchronous learning specialized vocabulary with the help of the Moodle-based course. The aim was achieved by fulfilling the following tasks: literary review to study the benefits and limitations of asynchronous and synchronous learning for finding the most suitable mode of communication for the Ukrainian students, to design a Moodle-based course, to verify it in the experimental learning. The experiment was conducted in 2020 in the time of Covid-19 pandemic at the National Technical University of Ukraine, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, and involved seventy students of the Power Engineering Department. The research purpose of both the article and the experiment was to assess the effectiveness of the developed online simulator which included audio recordings of native English specialists’ communication, interdisciplinary and industry-specific terminology, training tasks, and instructional guidelines. The outcome of the research proves the efficiency of applying an online simulator in the development of students’ professional competence in terms of adequate using interdisciplinary and industry-specific terminology.