Russian Online
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project focuses on Russian, which has a vital economic importance with significant trading partners and there is an increasing demand within EU countries for learning and teaching the language.
The goal of the project is to develop a free online portal for learning Russian language (A1 and A2 levels and additional lessons focusing on business Russian), for learning about the country and its culture as well as to offer as additional information important for business in Russia. Such a learning opportunity does not exist at the moment. Thus the project develops and disseminates new language learning materials, including online courses based on CEFL and develops a new and relevant OER. It will have multimedia content collected in an interactive e-learning media library linked directly to built in dictionaries and interactive and engaging exercises, games, competitions, etc. and will be developed in 9 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, English, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Spanish.
The project also aims at empowering older citizens mainly in Eastern Europe, students from universities and young adults to take a more active role at the work place through using their Russian language competence: It will teach business Russian, and offer all kinds of helpful downloadable model documents (forms and letters for different purposes) to be used for work. A website forum will allow for sharing experiences and discussing different issues with other users.
The main target audience are university learners in Eastern Europe, Spain and Germany but also all other users who can assess the course in English. The portal will also target school pupils, especially in Eastern Europe, where the numbers of pupils, who want to learn Russian are on the rise again.
We envision the following impact:
- Improved access to learning Russian language, including business Russian through a new OER since no similar resources exist at the moment;
- Potential long-term commercial use (applications for cell phones in the future, ads on the site, etc.);
- Improved understanding of Russia, its culture and doing business in Russia.