The Online Course as Initial Stage of a Course in Higher Education: Implementation and Evaluation of the Pre- MOOC Concept in a Technical Degree Course

In university teaching, a massive open online course (MOOC) is often regarded as an isolated online course, typically addressing a broad public of lifelong learners or future students. Nevertheless, some universities use MOOCs as a lecture for their students or use MOOCs as integrated part of their own lectures. In this study, we focus on a lecture concept called “Pre-MOOC”, where a MOOC is an obligative first part of a lecture in higher education, followed by lecture-part only open for own students and typically in presence. Therefore, we explore the current state of practices and research on Pre- MOOCs and describe our design-based research approach, the development of the MOOC and evaluation of its implementation in 2019. The article describes the instructional design process of the lecture in a master program of electrical engineering in which we used the instructional design model ADDIE. Finally, we will analyze the results of the evaluation with regard to the concept of a Pre- MOOC. Based on feedback from students and teachers, recommendations for designing a course with the Pre-MOOC design will be provided and implications as well limitations of the study will be discussed.