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Learning Electronics through a Remote Laboratory MOOC
G. Díaz, F. García Loro, M. Tawfik, E. Sancristobal, S. Martin, M. Castro
modules within the MOOC, and the global grade must exceed
the cut-off grade point established.
Results, positive and negative aspects
Although we don’t have yet a complete analysis of the
data obtained at the end of the course, some positive and
negative aspects can be deduced from these data.
The MOOC has been running with 3036 participants
enrolled. Although the discipline taught at the MOOC is
not a very general one, our proposal of learning electronics
by using a real laboratory inside a MOOC has raised
expectations, especially taking into account that the
course has been developed only in Spanish.
We have 1670 responses to the pre-course survey
(UNED COMA allows student to continue the course
without answering this survey), giving us an approximate
snapshot of of participants’ social profiles. More than 43%
are 36 years old or more, 33% among 26 and 35 years old
and only 14% younger than 26 years old. Only 8.9% are
female. 73% of the participants declare Spain as their native
country, followed by 6% from Colombia, with the rest
coming from other countries, especially Latin America.
Related with his working situation, only 37% declare
they are working currently. 20% said they are studying
at the university (14% in an electronics-related field) and
26% are studying out of the university, in professional
learning schools. A significant 17% declare they are neither
working nor studying. Also it is relevant that 12%
of the total declare they have a qualification related with
electric and/or electronic engineering.
In a range between 1 and 5, more than 90% sums up 4
or 5 answering that they wanted to obtain new skills and
competences. 80% also answered that the use of a real
remote laboratory was one of the main factors to enroll
at the MOOC. More than 84% hope their participation
at the MOOC help them to improve their competences.
Only the 45% declare they have used previously a real
electronics laboratory.
Only 920 participants finished the non-evaluable basic
electronics initial exam, it. Only 900 participants ended all
the videos for Module 2 (the module in which VISIR and
its basic operating procedures are presented). The number
(365) is even lower for the participants that did the
assessments in this module. The rest of the modules are
the real lab modules and the assessments are related with
the circuits they must build.
We have not enough space here to detail the numbers
of participants module by module, but there is a continuous
drop in the number of participants as the difficulty
in the modules increases. The videos in the last module,
related with operational amplifiers, have only being seen
by roughly 100 participants and the related assessments
only answered by 70 students.
Finally only 70 participants did the final exam and
passed. They answered the post-course survey and the
results were satisfactory, although clearly the final number
is very low to mean anything relevant from the statistical
point of view.
We could not get some other interesting data (the time
each participant pass in each module and in each assessment,
the time they really use VISIR for each practice, the
complete time per student dedicated to our MOOC, etc.)
because, at this moment, UNED COMA platform do not
save these data.
As said before one of our main research objectives was
to measure the ability of the queue administration system
developed for integrating VISIR that theoretically allows
a maximum of 16 simultaneous users. We can say the
MOOC had no problems with this system, but it is important
to point out that the number of users was low and the
maximum time slot allowed was one hour at a time.
As for the activity in the forums, we have observed
a great activity at the beginning of the MOOC, even
with facebook, twitter or mobile instant messaging apps
groups created for the MOOC. But as the number of active
participants began to low, also this activity began to
decrease. The mentors worked hard only during the two
first months and the teacher almost did not have to participate.
Some conclusions and future improvements
A first conclusion is that the idea of building a MOOC
dedicated to real basic electronic practices by using the
remote lab VISIR was interesting for many different
people, as demonstrated by the number of enrolled participants.
Also we can conclude that if we offer a completely open,
without prerequisites, non-general, specific technical
MOOC, this is really going to be used only by people with
the real prerequisites. In that sense, maybe the use of the
MOOC only for a selected group of people (for instance,
students at an electronics subject in a grade) could be a
good idea, as for example the Small Private Online Courses
(SPOCs), a term coined by edX President Anant Agarwal
(Agarwal, 2013). Following this idea, our MOOC would
be a good part of a blended learning solution.
From the pedagogical point of view, if we really want to
use the MOOC for giving a better service to participants,
if we want to know many more aspects related with the behavior
of each student at the MOOC, we need to change
Experience Track |216