The PerLE platform, Moodle, and adaptations in technology-based teaching for ESP

This paper reports on the PerLE digital platform for e-learning and digital community at the University of Calabria. PerLE was conceived as a digital environment to host blended learning support solutions for courses using Moodle, and to offer a community space for learning. Through the experience of digitally enhanced teaching initiatives which, with the advent of the Covid-19 emergency, were transformed into fully online course delivery, we report on how the platform uses Moodle, and the technical and pedagogical adaptations which have been applied in the wake of these circumstances. The teaching experience we focus on is ESP on a postgraduate course in Document Management. The purpose is to comprehend the affordances of digital technology while encouraging teacher sensitivity to the learner experience in a proposed communicative classroom dynamic, with careful pacing of lesson activities, input, and attention to the implications of affect and cognitive load for learners.