Language MOOCs and OERs: new trends and challenges

The year 2020 has recently been referred to as “the second year of MOOCs” (Shah, 2020). MOOCs are one of the most widespread means of development of education and a wide range of higher education institu-tions offer some kind of distance education through MOOCs. Open learn-ing has progressively gained place in higher education, introducing new models of flexible tools linked to long-distance education. This volume presents Language MOOCs from a wide array of perspectives, framing them with respect to OERs and new available technologies. The authors of the chapters are higher education professionals, applied linguists, and language technologists working on issues related to language learning and teaching, namely: MOOCs, OERs, new approaches in language teach-ing and learning, academic mobility, linguistic description of languages, linguistic diversity, language for specific purposes, digital transformation in education and new educational technologies. The volume includes a selection of contributions presented at two international conferences or-ganized within the project “Romance languages for Slavic-speaking uni-versity students” (LMOOC4SLAV), funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.