During the period of 2022-2023 the Community of legal entities in the form of an association of teachers of English within the framework of an Agreement with the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the NAO “Karaganda University named after E.A. Buketov" participate in the research project IRN AP09260118 “Facilitators to Enhance Educators’ Qualifications in Blended Learning: Efficiency Evaluation, Methodology, Vectors for Competencies Development”. The research was initiated as the follow-up of the “American English Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Facilitated Sessions” project, which was funded by the Regional English Language Office (RELO), U. S. Embassy in Nur-Sultan and conducted in 14 cities of Kazakhstan within 2019-2020 years. Throughout the process of the project realization, a special role of Massive online course facilitator was identified and diverse interactive techniques of engaging the course participants were applied. Transition to online format of the facilitated sessions contributed to integration of newly emergent methodical techniques and web applications to enhance the quality of learning online course materials ‘English for STEM”.

As a result, the project facilitator and teaching faculty team from the Buketov Karaganda University set a goal to conduct retrospective and perspective analysis with further strategies development to create conditions that would enhance professional competencies of specialists in pedagogy within the field “English as a Foreign Language” in compliance with cognitive - competence teaching approach on the basis of MOOC resources and facilitator’s assistance.

During the period of 2022-2023 within the project the following objectives were achieved:

1. Course methodology for enhancing the qualification of English FL teachers on the basis of MOOC resources and facilitator assistance was worked out
2. Facilitator’s methodical role was identified in terms of successful acquisition of course materials on the basis of the MOOC resources.
3. Facilitators’ main pedagogical and technical commitments toward successful acquisition of course materials with the use of MOOC resources were identified.
4. The list of platforms and web 2.0 tools were compiled in compliance with cognitive-competence approach in the area of teaching English as a Foreign Language with the aim to increase efficiency of MOOCs in accordance of learners and teachers’ needs and interests.
5. Educational materials with the use of Web 2.0. platforms and tools were developed to advance cognitive and communicative skills of course participants on the basis of MOOC resources with further embedding of Web 2.0 apps and functions in blended teaching.
6. Methods of learning the strategies to identify MOOC resources potential for improving qualification were designed.

The key role of the Association of Teachers of English of Kazakhstan “KazTEA” in the context of the research is implementation of the project “Advancing English for Media Literacy in Kazakhstan”, within which about 300 English FL teachers, Master and Phd students - pre-service EFL teachers from 11 cities of Kazakhstan learn aspects of media literacy on the basis of the online course “English for Media Literacy” with facilitator’s assistance. Thanks to this assistance and interactive forms of work during offline session the project participants have identified strategies to reveal fake information and learnt advertisement techniques to promote information and products. With the help of Web 2.0 apps such as Quizlet, Miro-board, Canva, etc. increases English language acquisition of the project participants.

Participants' feedback is very essential to project members. According to their feedbacks the significant role of the facilitator was revealed in technical aspects of Coursera platform navigation as well as methodical assistance to arrange interactive forms of work and discussion for the effective acquisition of the course materials.

Project work is in progress and data collection is ongoing within this research.