ИСТИНА

The modern World Wide Web has already evaluated to a fully functional global mass-media and educational resource. Global Network assumes dominant role in worldwide communications, especially within the Web.2 project, where it already quite efficiently promotes multidimensional interaction of various cultures and languages. Networked computers are also coming to the front of on-line language learning and teaching activities, and are widely used in linguistic research work in general and in contrastive linguistics and inter-cultural communication studies in particular. It is supposed that they could provide also necessary support for effective preservation of human languages’ and cultures’ diversity and sustainability. Thus, investigation and understanding of information transformations ongoing within educational interactions and scientific research activities while passing from a real world’s natural communication patterns and models to a virtual communication environment is crucial for understanding and adopting new knowledge of modern cognitive processes. Fully conscious and therefore effective use of mechanisms of “computerizing”, or “virtualizing” educational and research e-resources in language learning and teaching has become today of common primary and urgent concern. Technology of e-learning resources authoring is nowadays tightly connected with a fairly new concept of e-learning materials in general (electronic manuals, e-assessments, e-libraries and other e-learning resources - for example, data bases and learners’ corpuses). And here a fundamental concept of a learning object (LO) comes to the front [1]. Learning objects, as defined by the IEEE's Learning Technology Standards Committee, are “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning” [2]. Generally, the learning object model could be characterized by the belief that one can create independent chunks of educational content that provide a certain educational experience for some pedagogical purpose. Based on the object-oriented programming (OOP) model, this approach asserts that these chunks are self-contained, though they may contain references to other objects; and they may be combined or sequenced to form longer educational interactions. These chunks of educational content may be of any mode (interactive, passive) and of any format or media type. Main benefits of LO approach to education content authoring is usually defined as so-called RAID package (Reusability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Durability) [3]. The LO-approach has been successfully tested in construction work for interactive hyper-media e-learning Web-resources “Russian Phonetics” and “Russian Dialectal Phonetics” that would be presented for discussion. Both electronic educational and research resource are hitherto the first and unique ones based on SCORM ideology. The basic authoring algorithms have been derived not only from the object-oriented programming (OOP), but also from the Rapid Application Design (RAD) ideology and practice. In the functional perspective the resources’ structure itself could be considered as a specific LO, reusable and applicable for similar purposes. It comprises two major components: (1) a comprehensive theoretical overview of the domain, and (2) interactive practical sections (on-line self-tests, exercises, etc.). An interactive glossary of all encountered in texts linguistic and other special terms should be also provided through the dense network of hyperlinks. As essential multi- and hypermedia product, the linguistic e-course normally encompasses information in various perception modes: texts, image illustrations (dialect maps included), authentic Standard Russian and Russian dialectal spoken languages’ recordings from the archive of dialectological expeditions of the Philological Faculty of the MGU and other authoritative sources, etc. Nowadays we state that the above described theoretical assumptions and elaborated within the project’s activity practical algorithms have proved ever since its effectiveness in time- and labour-savings. Below is some numerical data of the estimated size of the Web-site e-learning resource “Russian Dialectal Phonetics”, which has been authored in accordance with the above-described principles within the time period of two years. Currently the site consists of: * 57 presentation chapters (in 4 main modules); * 212 contextual as well as separate interactive and multimedia self-assessments' modules; * 122 control integrative interactive multimedia tests; * 2090 speech illustrations (sound-) files; * 515 graphic illustrations (image-) files; * 52 interactive dialectal maps; * 57 sonograms; * 161 glossary terms with definitions. As an open-source product elaborated upon detailed study of the most effective SCORM-technologies and appropriate ideology, the e-course “Russian Dialectal Phonetics” could be further enlarged and outspread to other levels of linguistic description of the Russian dialectal system, i.e. morphology, syntax, lexicology, etc. Thus, our results endorse an assumption of the effectiveness of the technologically based approach to LOs’ construction and application.