About the project
I worked with the Scholierenacademie of the University of Groningen on the Knowlands project to create a MOOC about the subject of Computer Science. The aim was to stimulate highschool students to be curious and have an investigative attitude. This comprised creating scripts for informative videos about the subject and creating lesson materials for the MOOC (different types of lessons and activities and so-called ‘Help-cards’, that guide students in their research project).
Roles: Instructional designer
Skills: Instructional design, science communication
Help Cards
The help card concept was developed to provide more guidance into the research skills necessary for their research. For each skill (e.g. exploration or drafting a research question) there are different help cards. On these cards, the skill is explained and an exercise is given to practice the skill.
Some of of the help cards that I created were ‘Samen brainstormen’ (Brainstorm together) and ‘Mindmap maken’ (Creating a mindmap).
Scripts
The MOOC consisted of lesson-plans that teachers can follow in class and corresponding videos that give more information and explanation on the topic, provided by the actual researcher that works on this topic. For these videos, I created scripts that included the specific text that would be read out by the researcher and the interviewer and the context of the scene (e.g. animations in screen, the setting where the scene is filmed).
Because the topic of logic behind software (the topic of research of Jorge Perez, the researcher from Computer Science) is quite abstract and complex, the communication of the topic was a real challenge. Through thorough research and extensive conversations with the researcher, the best formulation of the sentences was constructed.
The whole video series can be found on YouTube.