The Design of Massive Open Online Course Platform for English Translation Learning Based on Moodle

Massive open online courses (MOOC) can offer more learning opportunities than traditional classroom and help improve the efficiency of learning. However, on the one hand, traditional online learning management system (also known as E-learning system) does not have the characteristics of MOOC platform. Therefore, it is not capable of supporting large-scale online learning. On the other hand, common MOOC platform (such as Courser a, Udacity, edX, etc.) lacks functional modules specifically designed for English translation learning. Hence, it can not satisfy the requirements of the learning. To solve this problem, we studied an ET-MOOC platform, which is designed specially for English translation learning. In this paper, we propose 8 basic design principles of the platform, according to the analyses we have done about the technical requirements of the platform, establish a Cloud-based architecture with 5 layers for the platform, so as to gain the ability to support large-scale online learning, design 4 functional modules closely related with English translation learning (e.g. Corpus, terminology management, translation memories, etc.), in order to satisfy the actual requirements of English translation learning. Finally, implement the ET-MOOC platform on the basis of MOODLE.