Objectives

Mobile technologies can enhance learning experience in many ways - they provide instant feedback and access to materials, help design new assessment models and exercises. For effective implementing of a new device or technology it is necessary to investigate its didactic potential. These facts put enormous pressure on colleges and universities that are not yet ready to communicate with their key audience using mobile devices due to the fact that most of them don't have a website in a mobile version. Certainly, in this respect higher education will lag behind corporations and businesses. Yet despite our campuses limited resources, we'll have to figure out how to solve the following problems - how to incorporate effectively mobile devices into teaching process, how to develop our instructors' and professors' professional competence in mobile technologies, how to create mobile apps for teaching purposes, etc.

The aim of a long-term project Mobile devices in Language Classroom: theory and practice launched in 2011 at the Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Moscow State university is to work out the strategies of mobile technologies integration into teaching process. This project includes the following stages:
1. analysis of students' preparedness to implement new technologies and possible strategies of mobile learning through the eyes of our learners (student survey: 230 participants) November 2011-March 2012;
2. setting up a site for educators devoted to mobile teaching/learning experience and mobile resources URL and a moblog devoted to new mobile technologies suitable for teaching and learning purposes launched in December 2011;
3. working out the syllabus for a distance education professional development course for foreign language teachers Mobile technologies in Language Classroom December 2011-August 2012;
4. launching and running the professional development course September 2012;
5. Analysis of EFL teachers' view on mobile technologies integration in language classroom (teacher online survey, interviews and a focus group) September 2012 - December 2012;
6. working out strategy to deliver mobile content to our students - mobile tests, tasks based on mobile reference apps, mobile podcasts and video casts, use of RSS feeds for news, blogs, and events September 2012 -May 2013;
7. working out ways to get a fast feedback from students via Student Response System, Twitter, etc. September 2012 -September 2013;
8. designing and launching our own specialty educational grammar/vocabulary apps September-December 2013;
9. designing and creating a mobile version of educational web resources site of our department Deсember 2013.