Collaborative learning at engineering universities: Benefits and challenges

This paper concerns the cutting edge educational approaches incorporated into syllabuses of the most progressive Russian higher technical schools. The authors discuss one of the active methods in teaching foreign languages - collaborative learning implemented in e-courses. Theoretical and historical aspects of this approach are addressed, as are its suitability for engineering education and possible ways of introducing collaborative learning into ecourses. Collaborative learning technology offers wide prospects for teachers of foreign languages as it enables the use of various patterns of interaction, promotes discussion, opinion exchange, peer assessment and building an e-learning community, fosters the development of e-culture and netiquette, and prepares future specialists for work in their professional sphere under the new conditions imposed by society's technological and cultural development. This paper describes real pedagogical experience of teaching English to students using the platform Moodle, focusing on the capacity of different Moodle instruments for designing group work tasks. Recommendations are given for their usage and the results of implementing a collaborative learning approach into certain e-courses offered at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) are presented.