LE@D - Laboratório de Educação a Distância e Elearning | Artigos em revistas / Papers in journals
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Browsing LE@D - Laboratório de Educação a Distância e Elearning | Artigos em revistas / Papers in journals by Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) "13:Ação Climática"
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- Can MOOCs empower people to critically think about climate change?: a learning outcome based comparison of two MOOCsPublication . Otto, Daniel; Caeiro, Sandra; Nicolau, Paula Bacelar; Disterheft, Antje; Teixeira, António; Becker, Sara; Bollmann, Alexander; Sander, KirstenClimate change can be regarded as one of the key topics of sustainable development where public awareness and education are crucial. In the field of education, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have raised remarkable attention throughout the last decade as their initial objective is to provide massive open online education for everyone. This article aims to explore the impact of MOOCs on learning about climate change. This is necessary in order to evaluate whether MOOCs can make a substantial contribution to lifelong learning about sustainable development for a wider audience. We therefore present findings from self-assessment questionnaires of participants from two climate change MOOCs provided by two-distance learning universities in Germany and Portugal. Both MOOCs aimed at imparting to the participants the competencies to better understand the topic of climate change. The objective of the survey was a competency-based evaluation to review which learning outcomes have been achieved. The results indicate that taking part in either of the MOOCs increased the participants’ competencies to critically engage in the climate change debate. MOOCs are able to convey certain learning outcomes to the students and thus can contribute to climate change literacy. For further research, we recommend a more differentiated view on MOOCs and the learning opportunities for participants. Options for potential improvement are to think of better ways of how to integrate MOOCs into climate change education or to consider possibilities to increase the attractiveness of MOOCs for instance by using innovative formats to overcome the barriers between formal and informal learning
- iMOOC on climate change: evaluation of a massive open online learning pilot experiencePublication . Coelho, José; Teixeira, António; Nicolau, Paula Bacelar; Caeiro, Sandra; Rocio, VitorMOOCs are a recent phenomenon, although given its impact, have been subject to a large debate. Several questions have been raised by researchers and educators alike as regarding its sustainability both economical and as an efficient mode of education provision. In this paper we contribute to this discussion by presenting a case study, a Portuguese MOOC about lived experiences in climate change which piloted the iMOOC pedagogical model developed at Universidade Aberta. The iMOOC is an hybrid model which incorporates elements from existing MOOCs but adds other features drawn from UAb's experience with online learning and aim at better integrate in the larger context of the institutional pedagogical culture. The iMOOC implied also an integration of platforms - Moodle and Elgg. The course had more than one thousand participants, and it was the largest MOOC course on Portuguese language delivered so far. We discuss the effort required to design and deliver the course, the technological solution developed, and the results obtained. We registered a moderate effort to create and run the course, ensured by internal staff from the University. The technological solution was a success, an integrated architecture combining well-established, well-tested open software. The completion rate was 3.3%, but the high success of this innovative learning experience is demonstrated by the active involvement of participants, almost 50% of the ones that followed the course until the end, and the satisfaction survey results, with 90% of approval. Lessons learned from this experience and future research on the field are also discussed.