The Benefits of Using Virtual Learning Environment - Research Proposal Example

The Peacekeeping English Project (currently active in 23 countries worldwide) is funded by the UK Government Global Conflict Prevention Fund, managed by the British Council and aims to promote the English Language training of UN civilian, military and police peacekeeping personnel worldwide. In Ukraine, this has been realized through the teacher training of the local teachers throughout the seven Ministry of Defence institutes and a Ministry of Interior University where the officers take specialized intensive courses prior to and following international peacekeeping missions and exercises.

In Moldova, a neighbouring country, a similar teacher-training project was implemented. The ultimate goal of the project is to achieve local sustainability in all our current operations including teacher training. Since 2003, a teacher-training course called the ‘In-service Certificate in English Language Teaching’ (ICELT) has been approved and accredited by Cambridge ESOL. ICELT is designed to improve the English language teaching among the non-native speaker teachers who have a minimum of 2 years teaching Based on the survey and personal interviews that has been conducted with the trainees and tutors including the result of a keen observation focusing on the online forum contributions that has been posted by some anonymous trainees, the study will determine whether the use of online learning environment could create a positive impact in terms of improving the result of teacher-training programme.

The use of the Internet and other related technologies has made a significant increase over the past ten years. (Lavooy and Palmer, 2003) In line with the progress in the development of Internet-based technology, a constant need for education to go through a major restructuring has become evident. Each year, a lot of colleges and universities have been investing a lot of money in developing complete web-based classes. (Ewing-Taylor, 1999)