Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): a viable option for teaching Technical English?

Abstract

Technical English has been taught as an online course parallel to the ordinary course at the Faculty of Engineering and Agricultural Sciences of the National University of San Luis since 2008. Although this was a more comfortable option for several groups of students, in recent years a decline in the number of students taking the course was observed. On the other hand and in addition to this, there was a necessity for continuous innovation in our teaching methodologies in virtual scenarios. It was within this context that in 2016 the online course was transformed by the adoption of some characteristics of MOOC courses. Taking into account the number of students that enrolled and took the course in 2016, we concluded that its implementation was successful since most of them finished and passed. In this work, we present a retrospective and comparative perspective of the online course in both modalities, and we also reflect on the impact on teaching.