The development of Business English courses using online technology to address the emerging needs in the Cypriot context

Abstract

[EN] The global financial crisis, the implosion of the local economy in Cyprus as well as European and global trends pertaining to the modernization of Higher Education, have urged educational administrators, departments and faculty members to rethink the mode of delivery of their traditional face-to-face courses and redesign them with the support of electronic online platforms, Moodle is a case in point, in blended learning mode or entirely in Distance Learning mode and thus increase student enrollement and satisfaction as well as minimize costs for their respective institutions. Towards these goals the utilization of the Moodle Learning Management System has been gradually widely accepted, which has been increasingly gaining popularity at the European as well as at the global level in helping converting traditional courses into online ones apart from introducing options for blended learning. In this paper, I present initially the rationale behind the need to redesign and deliver a Bachelor degree in Business Administration in Distance learning mode in the first language of the majority of the enrolled students, Greek. Then I move on to describe the steps taken in order to offer for the first time the course BADM231 (Business Communicaions) in Greek using the Moodle Learning Platform to convert the traditionally taught course while I also present and discuss the associated challenges prior to launcing the course in entirely Distance Learning Mode in Spring 2018. Finally I briefly report on the solutions saught and their implementation and I close by etting the goals for the future.