Abstract:

Open Access education is a movement that is growing in strength as a way of promoting innovation in schools. Such it is the case of the Massive Online Open-access Courses (MOOCs), which, in addition, promotes the democratization of learning. The present research is part of a national wide strategic project on energy sustainability funded by the Mexican CONACYT-SENER (Agreement: S0019­2014­01). The project consists in developing MOOCs to train on both energy and sustainability topics by the use of innovative educational strategies such as the Problem-Based Gamification (PBG). Three teams has been working in this process: a group of experts in energy and sustainability, another group of experts in educational innovation and finally, a group of experts in technical production. The aim of the present study is to verify what would be the impact of PBG when it is used in the design of MOOCs by the three groups of experts. The study was developed through a qualitative methodology by which we conducted semi-structured interviews to the three teams of experts and the analysis of the significant documents that establish the format in which the MOOCs were planned and written.

Three categories emerged from the analysis: previous experience on design of content in MOOCs, previous experience on gamification and previous experience on problem-based learning.

Results from the research described that the majority of the 'Energy and Sustainability' expert group had never used the MOOCs design of content, translating into a positively significant support from the 'Courses Creation and implementation' expert group. In addition, it was also found that the same team had limited knowledge regarding gamification despite they were familiar with problem based learning methodology as they used it in their lessons. Secondly, the support of educational innovation team was significant as well. The study shows how interdisciplinary work is highly relevant for the development and improvement of open innovation resources and methodologies.

These results can be taken into the account to assist in the design of futures MOOCs, particularly xMOOCs, in a way to promote more active and less traditional types of learning.

Keywords:

Gamification based challenge, MOOCs, sustainable energy.