Abstract:

The improvement of the built housing stock, especially in areas of social vulnerability, has become a need to be addressed in recent years by public administrations. Consequently, the need to train professionals in transversal knowledge has become urgent, not only related to construction technology but also to issues of social content. This paper shows the design of a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) entitled “Accompanied self-renovation. Habitability and safety conditions improvement” which is part of the Smart Rehabilitation 3.0, a project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program that aims to mitigate and cover the gap between educational offer and the social reality, by defining, a new professional profile of “Building Rehabilitation Expert”. The MOOC course presented is aimed mainly at technicians and professionals and provides the knowledge to carry out ‘bottom-up’ rehabilitations based on the needs and capabilities of the resident population. The course contents focus on improving health, safety and risk prevention conditions in buildings, improving the adequacy of spaces and accessibility and energy performance. During the course, a series of technical actions are provided to improve the conditions of the living and community spaces with the collaboration whenever possible, of the local associative and productive fabric, with a transversal and interdisciplinary approach.

The paper will also describe the different steps and methodology to develop the set of technical MOOCs, to which this specific course belongs. All of them share the common objective, with an international scope, of expanding the knowledge of professionals involved in construction towards the rehabilitation and retrofitting of buildings. The set of MOOCs results from the coordination of different countries, which are the different partners of this EU Program: Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), RehabiMed Association, Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy), University of Cyprus and Kauno University of Technology (Lithuania).

The methodology phases of design that will be detailed are the following:
1. First research on the existing MOOCs, in the university context, addressing the subject of the rehabilitation and retrofitting of buildings, in order to identify the gaps.
2. Proposal of several course contents by every partner, according to the identified gaps aforementioned and the professional experience of the corresponding working teams.
3. Consensus and distribution among partners of the most needed topics to be developed.
4. Second research on recent MOOCs with any kind of subjects with the aim of establishing the most successful format. Meaningful data about the structure and suitable length of time were learnt.
5. New consensus between partners on the MOOC format.
6. Design of specific structure and contents of the course.

The paper will provide the conclusions of each part and the whole process always from the point of view of a methodology that should also help to forge cross-national links and academic networks extending beyond the borders.

Keywords:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), e-learning Projects, Rehabilitation, crosscutting knowledge.