A massive open online course designed to support the development of virtual mobility transversal skills: Preliminary evaluation results from European participants

Abstract

In the last years, the concept of «Virtual Mobility» has receiving a growing attention from educational policy makers and institutions, because it has the potential to make more accessible and effective students and teachers mobility in Higher Education. Virtual Mobility could be defined as institutional ICT-supported activities that trigger or facilitate international collaborative experiences in the context of teaching and/or learning. Despite the interest, there is still a few empirical researches regarding actual effectiveness of Virtual Mobility implementation and which technological solutions could be adopted. The present paper describes a research project aimed1 at designing an Open and Accessible Virtual Mobility Massive Open Online Course, by involving students and teachers from six European countries and higher education institutions. 716 participants completed and assessed the Open Virtual Mobility MOOC. Participants expressed a positive evaluation of different MOOCs features: (1) Badges; (2) Technical features; (3) Gamification. Four out of eight MOOCs obtained the highest evaluation: (1) Collaborative learning; (2) Autonomy-drive learning; (3) Open-mindedness; (4) Intercultural Skills. Future research trajectories would be addressed.