Online courses of Portuguese as a second language: Closing the gap with blended learning in mainstream education

The main goal of this paper is to describe an on-going educational project of online courses of Portuguese as a second language (PL2) for immigrant students attending primary and secondary schools run in Portugal through a blended learning environment as an effective way to support mainstream education. Focus will be given to the collaborative work developed between institutional partners, i.e., General Directorate for Education, schools' headmasters and Ciberescola Association, in order to adequate the courses to mainstream education and to continually iron out daily practical problems. The authors will also explain the functioning of the courses tools and outline the option in matching two different services - Ciberescola platform and FM EA-TEL- as a way to tackle the educational handicap immigrant students face when they arrive to the hosting country. Particular attention will be given to describe the functioning of the materials created from scratch for this project, stressing some features shared with OER, namely (i) free use by learners and reuse by teachers; (ii) integration of all types of digital media. Eventually, an account of the current impact of the project will also be unfolded.