Abstract:

The main subject of this paper deals with three recent completed applications based on massive online open courses -MOOC- in short. MOOCs are provided by websites. The MOOC’s interest is getting up due to the free, easy and available access to numerous domains covering sciences, philosophy, literature, management. MOOCs could be an answer for the knowledge worldwide sharing. About ten thousands students over the world participate to any MOOC. During eight weeks, once a week, at their own rhythm, the attendees watch ten minutes online lessons, answer quizzes and make homework for training. Students also have to reply to official quizzes and to send homework. These official and online assessments required for the certificate validate the competences. Students can upload their work, discuss on forum, ask questions to the community and share knowledge. In a pedagogical context, the online courses should give an added value to the curriculum of their students. In our paper, three recently completed examples are described. The two first take place in a French Institute of Technology and the third one in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. These universities have been collaborating for over fifteen years. The first online lessons are concerned with the robotics vision subject (http://petercorke.com/ ). A group of ten students in the bachelor of Technology course participate to the sessions. In their syllabus a mentored project has to be completed before the end of semester and the robotics vision domain is one of the subjects proposed. And each week, in addition to their online lessons, a 2 hours meeting is planned in the computer room with one or two teachers if necessary. As results, all students get the certificate. The second series of MOOC lessons deal with an initiation to an enhanced programming language (https://fr.coursera.org/epfl). A group of twelve students in the bachelor of Technology course participate to the sessions. With a little help from teachers main students obtain the final certificate. The third MOOC is concerned with the individual leadership behaviour (www.coursera.org/course/totalleadership ). It concerns a group of twenty students in the bachelor of Energy and Construction. This MOOC is integrated as a part their module “Leadership and project management” and includes a weekly meeting. The objectives are to articulate the student’s personal values and leadership analysis. Student has to cultivate supportive relationships with people, and continually experiments with how to get things done, trying to align his actions with this values, to produce positive sustainable change. Most of students obtain the certificate. The three examples confirmed that the physical presence of the teacher was essential. Nevertheless, the teachers and the teachings methods should use the most recent technology based on computer communications and software. The development of MOOC platforms is an answer. In France, the France Digital University platform has been launched at the end of 2013. Courses are available since 2014. They cover domains as Mathematics, Philosophy, History, Public Health (www.sup-numerique.gouv.fr ). Within two years, one million of attendees took part to the online courses. The last author of this article offers his experience as an expert in digital University. The validation of the online certificate, the development of portfolio are two subjects that deal with MOOC not only in French language.

Keywords:

MOOC, Online learning, active learning.