Introduction Two key employability skills for today’s Communication Sciences students are written communication and computer literacy, particularly in combination with sound L2 proficiency. L2 writing skills can be effectively enhanced through participation in a variety of tasks and activities incorporated in a Moodle-based course. Taking part in such a course can also help students improve their ICT skills. This is an overview of Moodle activities and other web tools employed to enhance L2 writing skills in Writing in English, a course taught by the author at the Centre for Croatian Studies of the University of Zagreb. This is a compulsory course for students who will subsequently go on to work in journalism or public relations, fields where sound English writing skills and a basic ICT literacy are vital prerequisites for those who wish to be competitive in the current job market. Figure 1. Borongaj Campus, photo srce.hr Background on the course Writing in English is a 60-hour seminar attended by Croatian undergraduate students of Communication Sciences, as well as by Erasmus students majoring in related fields, coming from a range of countries. On average 15 students attend the course in a given semester, all of whom have English as their L2. Although the students are required to be at CEFR level B1, a placement test administered at the beginning of the course usually shows students to have varying levels of proficiency ranging from B1 to C1. Two face-to-face orientation sessions are held at the beginning of the semester. The remainder of the course is conducted online and the final exam is paper- based. F Figure 2. Croatian Studies library, photo srce.hr Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Centre for Croatian Studies for their readiness to offer the course in an online format, as well as the University of Zagreb Computing Centre (SRCE) for technical support. I would also like to thank the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet) for their excellent program, the E-learning Academy, as attending it helped me develop this course. Moodle activities and other tools employed in the course Forum Wiki Glossary Workshop E-portfolio Online notice boards Impacting on student ICT skills A survey taken by Silva, Lourtie, & Aires (2013) found that computer literacy ranks high on the list of key employability skills in the view of both online students and teachers. Although Writing in English course objectives do not include specific references to student ICT skills, it is important to note that students are highly likely to acquire some of these simply as a result of taking the course in its online format, particularly those which their ICT skills practicum does not address, i.e. the effective use of online collaboration tools, and effective communication and feedback strategies and techniques. This increases the students’ overall ICT literacy, adding to their likelihood of securing employment upon completing their study programme. Vedrana Vojković Estatiev, Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb [email protected] @Ven_VVE Literature cited CAMPBELL, A. P. (2003). Weblogs for use with ESL classes In The Internet TESL Journal, IX(2), Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html. DAY , M.; BATSON, T. (1995). The network-based writing classroom: the ENFI idea. In Collins, Marie & Zane Berge (Eds.), Computer mediated communication and the online writing classroom volume two: higher education (pp. 25-46). (reprinted with permission) Retrieved from http://technorhetoric.com/1.2/coverweb/cmcmday.html DINAPOLI, R.; ALGARRA, V. (2001). Beyond problem- orientedness in simulation tasks In S. Posteguillo, I. Fortanet & J.C. Palmer (Eds.), Methodology and new technologies in languages for specific purposes (pp. 87- 93) LEE, I. (2011). Working smarter, not working harder: revisiting teacher feedback in the L2 writing classroom In The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 67(3), (pp. 377-399) SILVA, A.P.; LOURTIE, P.; AIRES, L.; (2013). Employability in online higher education: a case study In The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(1), Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1262/ 2426 . Conclusions It may be concluded that the students’ writing skills and written communicative competence are enhanced through increased opportunities for authentic written communication compared with the classroom environment, as well as through writing for a wider audience than the instructor alone, which creates a less artificial writing context. Student feedback collected at the end of the course indicated that they felt it beneficial to be doing so much writing and to be able to read the writing of their peers, as well as useful to have the experience of taking part in an online course, as they expect to engage in this type of learning increasingly in the future. Further research seems to be necessary regarding which features of writing are most likely to see improvement over the course of a semester, and to what extent feedback has an impact on this. Developing writing English skills of Communication Sciences students Corrective feedback and the development of L2 writing skills In an online course, the fact that most of a student’s written work may be seen by other students raises the issue of whether the overall effect will be demotivating if the feedback focuses disproportionately on error correction. Bearing this in mind, feedback in the course is given in the form of comments on the students’ journal entries in the e-portfolio, as well as short personalised podcasts and screencasts in the case of longer pieces of writing. While the comments in the e-portfolio attempt to engage students in further discussion on those aspects of each unit which they have found interesting enough to reflect on, the podcasts and screencasts provide a commentary on features of student writing at the textual level, e.g. cohesion and coherence.