ARE LOCAL TEACHERS REQUIRED WITHIN MOOCS SESSIONS?

The paper deals with the connection between the classical teachings and a modern one known as MOOC for Massive Online Open Courses[1,2]. This paper reports the experiences made at an Institute of Technology in using Mooc to improve our academic achievement. Students from the two first years of the Bachelor in Electrical Engineering and Computing Science are concerned with these experiences. The students have to perform a mentored project every semester. Within this framework some students have been asked to attend Moocs on subjects that were not exactly in the schedule of the Bachelor. Two Moocs were provided by the Queensland University of Technology (www.qut.edu.au) and the professor Peter Corke (www.petercorke.com ), and were dealing with robotics and vision: the third Mooc was organized by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (www.epfl.ch) and was an introduction to programming in C++. The keen interest of students for these subjects is a first explanation for the success of the experiences encountered, but this explanation must be completed and therefore we are going to give a more precise description of the experiences to enlighten the reasons of their success.

Each experience has been organized with approximately the same timetable. A first meeting has been organized two weeks before the beginning of the Mooc. During this meeting, the local team of teachers explained the subject of the Mooc and gave prerequisite knowledge: for example for the first Mooc about robotics, teachers gave explanations about matrices and Matlab. The first meeting is also devoted to the organization of the following weeks: when and where will the participants meet, who are the teachers involved, how can these teachers help, and so on…As soon as the Mooc has began, all local participants spend half a day together each week, each one first working on his own and then discussing about the problems he has encountered. The local pluridisciplinary team is important for students who need knowledge in different domains, but also appreciate to see how a teacher can work and progress in a subject he is not specialized in. This part of the work has to be managed by teachers in the same way as an athletic training, and this coaching is the key of the important rate of success of our students in regard with the Moocs. The last meeting occurs one week after the Mooc has ended and consist on an evaluation of the Mooc and of the work made. This meeting gives us ideas for further works.

References:
[1] A robotics experience with mooc, Jean-Charles Canonne, Jean-Paul Bécar, Aurel Fratu, Mariana Fratu, Iceri2015 proceedings, pp 6420-6425, 2015, ISBN: 978-84-608-2657-6.
[2] Wheeler s., Gerver r., Learning with 'e's: educational theory and practice in the digital age, crown house publishing, 2015, ISBN: 978-1-84590-939-0.