Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for Teaching Portuguese for Foreigners: A Case Study

Abstract

Education is experiencing a period of change and the traditional models of education adopted by universities need to go through innovative processes to democratize knowledge, attract new learners and optimize resources. The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) can contribute to such changes. However, studies on the reuse of OERs and language courses in the MOOC format are still scarce. To this end, the aims of this study are (a) to verify whether the OER production cycle proposed by Zancanaro (2015) in his framework could be used in part for the production and supply of MOOCs and (b) to present the production and to offer a process of the Portuguese Teaching MOOC for Foreigners (MOOC-PFL), developed at the Regional University of Blumenau. This is a case study that shows a production and offers cycle comprising the phases of analysis and design, coding, evaluation, dissemination and offering. Considering it was the first experience of the University with a MOOC course, it exceeded expectations, provided an increase in the institution’s and city’s visibility, contributed to the demystification of the OER use by the production and offer team and generated incentives for the production of new levels.