About Us
This MOOC is an initiative from the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). It runs on the SpeakApps project platform and uses its tools.
This video explains how Tandem MOOC works.
What is SpeakApps?
Because of the difficulties of ensuring that students have enough time to practise speaking and get feedback, the SpeakApps project created an open source online platform for practising speaking online. The ultimate aim of SpeakApps is to help the community of foreign language teachers and students have access to tools to help them.
What is the Tandem MOOC project?
The Tandem MOOC project was borne in order to improve foreign language learners’ opportunities to practise their English and Spanish conversation skills in e-tandem, and to provide the foreign language teaching community with new insights into this topic. Therefore, research carried out in Tandem MOOC has mostly focused on learners’ emotions and experience within the course, their intercultural communication competence and speaking abilities, and in course and task design.
What does the research say?
Previous research carried out on Tandem MOOC shows that practise in e-tandems contributes to the improvement of learners’ fluency and self-confidence when speaking in a foreign language. Moreover, research outcomes also reveal that the learning environment of Tandem MOOC might trigger certain e-tandem learners’ emotions, such as foreign language anxiety, although it tends to decrease as learners’ practise within the course goes on.
For more information on the results of the research
Appel, Christine & Pujolà, Joan-Tomàs 2021: Designing speaking interaction in LMOOCs: An eTandem approach. ReCALL 33 (2).
