Abstract:

As part of the efforts of Instituto Superior Técnico (tecnico.ulisboa.pt), Universidade de Lisboa, for the production of Massive Open Online Courses, which have culminated with the creation of MOOC Técnico (http://mooc.tecnico.ulisboa.pt), we hereby present here the preliminary results in what concerns the reflections based on the testimony of those who experienced in the past year the raising and resolving of issues connected to the development and design of the first courses, the instructors/authors of these courses. These results consist, on the one hand, of the resolutions that have had to be taken on the design and on the curricular development of the courses, curricular organisation of the contents and all other questions that should be answered, in contrast with the standard curriculum, design and curricular development, the organisation of standard presencial lectures, courses or degrees. And, on the other hand, the answers to the following questions: planning, multimedia developing content production for the courses, namely video recording, which consists overall on a collaborative work put together with the technical multimedia team formed to give support and ensure the production of the MOOC Técnico courses.

In the past year, three courses of MOOC Técnico were developed: Markov Matrices (mmX), Experimental Physics (feX) and Energy Systems (esX). Their design and production represented a completely different kind of scientific-pedagogical trial from the one experienced by teachers, when they develop a curriculum for a given standard course, or preparation for in-person class attendance. On the other hand, all the challenges posed to the technical team that supported them, beginning with the creation of pictures and illustrations, animations, ending with the pos-production of recorded videos, in the flow of designing and producing contents for the courses, also represented a completely new experience for support team members who were encouraged progressively to take ownership of the main subject of the course.

Based on the collected shared testimonies and the observed practices about the overall lived experiences by each of the team members involved in a course, we present here the preliminary conclusions with the corresponding indications for future work, in a perspective of research-action towards the improvement of the original proposed guidelines for MOOC courses and video contents (Moura Santos, Costa, Viana and Silva, 2015; Silva, Moura Santos, Costa and Viana, 2016). These conclusions can be organised according to the following lines of action:
(i) curriculum elements addressed in the design and curricular organisation of the open online course (objectives, contents, pedagogical strategies, assessment) and of each corresponding modules;
(ii) production planning of the contents to include into the course, particularly, of the videos (storyboards);
(iii) forms of ensuring accessibility, sustainability and quality of the contents and educational digital resources, and of the audio and visual quality of the course videos.

Finally, we observe that within this collaborative experience, with contributions of several different areas of expertise, an innovative way of designing and developing contents for courses emerges. One that is very much unlike the usual individual, lonely, teachers centred practice of Portuguese higher education, and one that foster an intensive experience in collaborative curricular development.

Keywords:

MOOC, design and curricular development, multimedia contents, storyboards.