Learner Autonomy Powered by Moodle: Do Language Students Really Want It?

The study described in this article focuses on two major subject areas. On the one hand, different age groups of university language students at B2, B2+ and C1 level were asked to evaluate the opportunities of Moodle when studying English as an applied business language; on the other hand, the students’ disposition to use Moodle as a technological tool to foster learner autonomy was investigated. As Moodle provides social media features such as blogs, chats and quizzes, it seems to perfectly supplement traditional classroom teaching with student activities which can be performed without the supervision of the language instructor. One question of the survey among 138 applied business language students at the JKU (Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria) therefore attempted to establish how much the increasing use of social media has impacted on students’ needs for teacher-independent online learning. The results show a clear preference for ‘conservative’ language acquisition methods. Only 25% of the less advanced students (and even fewer of the more advanced ones) are interested in using social media features to direct their own learning progress and/or to create their own course content. The teacher still is - in the eyes of these students - very clearly the only person to provide content. This article will discuss the survey in detail and offer possible explanations for its results.