Citizenship Training through sMOOCs: A Participative and Intercreative Learning

Abstract

sMOOCs (social massive open online courses) have revealed themselves as a remarkable opportunity to foster the culture of participation and open knowledge and sustainability. Due to their communicative potential, they make it possible for participants to interact, to create ubiquitous learning, and to build knowledge in a collective way. This educational and communicative line has set the basis for the European ECO (e-learning, communication, open data) Project, i.e., the purpose of our study, which, beyond training teachers, is decidedly betting on open life-long education. The results presented in the study have been elicited by following a quantitative methodology, through the analysis of a “sMOOC Step by Step” community, intended to become an educational gate to students’ empowerment, shared knowledge, and participation in the course. Results show that collaborative work practices organized by teachers in that virtual learning community encourage educational changes. Both the degree of satisfaction with the learning achieved and the way students perceive its direct applicability to real-life professional contexts prove the effectiveness of this training model. Our research has expanded, aiming to discover sMOOCs opportunities for teacher training and assessing the motivation shown by the virtual learning community towards such an educational reality.