Abstract:

This course was sponsored by the European project ECO (E-learning, Communication, Open resources) which is an educational project financed by the European Commission. Its objective is to disseminate a new way to educate through MOOC and optimize the chances for open, accessible and massive learning at a pan-European scale, promoting the training of teachers by offering them to become owners of their own MOOC. The project is based on Open Educational Resources (OER) providing free access to a wide variety of online courses open mass (MOOC) and are available in up to 6 languages.

A group of young professor and researchers, under the umbrella of the Spanish Thematic Network FUEGORED "Effects of Forest Fires on Soil", proposed a MOOC on forest fires for all types of participants. The main objective of #MOOCIncendios was to implement a new perspective of forest fires, giving a point of view from ecological and cultural element within the perspectives in social, economic and environmental areas, considering its useful side but also its catastrophic aspects. The course provided analysis tools, resources and reliable references to understand fire scenarios to assess the role of fire in ecosystems, both past, present and future. The MOOC was divided into three progressive modules (four weeks) dealing with the problem of megafires, effects on the ecosystem and topics concerning prevention, management and restoration.

Open and free courses, accessible and personalized, constitute a tool for continuous training and professional development in the field of education and promote collaboration of staff from different universities and institutions within a multidisciplinary field.

Keywords:

Massive Open Online Courses, Fire ecology, e-learning.