MOOC based educational model for pre-university writing program

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to share the experience of developing brush-up online interactive programs enhanced with the concept of MOOC, for incoming freshmen, six months before the start of the academic life. Three programs were developed with three-Tiered courses for Basic Math, English for Communication, and Writing Skills, with cooperation of members consisting of undergraduate students, office staff, and teaching staff in a team, making use of the project-based learning model. While developing the courses, the team identified and defined problems and worked on solving the problems with limited resources on campus. The target readers for this paper are school administrators, IT administrators, and any other stakeholders on campus with the intention of improving the quality of education on campus. Especially, this paper shows a model of active learning across stakeholders beyond the borders of the classroom. It is a must reading for active learning advocates in the social constructive education model. It is an understood practice that the MOOC education has been solely instructionally designed and developed by professionals including commercial vendors. However, Kansai University developed the learning contents, the instructional and learning model with the interactive aspects, as well as the delivery system from scratch. It is based on the innovative idea generation with careful learning design incorporating the concepts of knowledge mapping, "gamification", social learning, and "one-sit learning and mastery". The goal setting, the concept making and design, the knowledge mapping as well as the fundamental educational philosophy were defined and developed by the team. The goal of this paper is to share with readers our encountered difficulties, identified problems, and our optimal solutions to those problems in the course of development and its execution, and to demonstrate a showcase of a team-based project as an extension of active learning involving all major stakeholders on campus..