TY - JOUR
T1 - Supporting urban change
T2 - Using a MOOC to facilitate attitudinal learning and participation in smart cities
AU - Hudson , Lorraine
AU - Wolff, Annika
AU - Gooch, Daniel
AU - Van Der Linden, Janet
AU - Kortuem, Gerd
AU - Petre, Marian
AU - ten Veen, Rianne
AU - O'Connor-Gotra, Sinead
N1 - Accepted author manuscript
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Smart cities try to use technology and data to improve the efficiency of city services, to address societal challenges and to improve collaboration between citizens and government. Driving such social change requires a deep socio-ecological transition with both organisations and individual's lifestyles needing to change. This has led to an increasing recognition of the need for education to empower people to play a more active role within smart city initiatives. This paper examines our use of a MOOC as a tool to facilitate attitudinal learning around the topic of smart cities and to explore whether the learners engage in local smart city activities. A mixed methods research design was employed, collecting data via an online survey that was completed by 202 learners and through in-depth interviews with 8 of those learners. The results show that learners’ perceived high levels of attitudinal learning on the topic of smart cities across four categories of learning outcomes (general, cognitive, affective and behavioural). Our findings also contribute to an understanding of the types of post-course activities learners participate in and their experiences of trying to apply what they learnt if they participated in local smart city activities. We conclude by providing new insights into how to design for learning to support social change in the context of a MOOC.
AB - Smart cities try to use technology and data to improve the efficiency of city services, to address societal challenges and to improve collaboration between citizens and government. Driving such social change requires a deep socio-ecological transition with both organisations and individual's lifestyles needing to change. This has led to an increasing recognition of the need for education to empower people to play a more active role within smart city initiatives. This paper examines our use of a MOOC as a tool to facilitate attitudinal learning around the topic of smart cities and to explore whether the learners engage in local smart city activities. A mixed methods research design was employed, collecting data via an online survey that was completed by 202 learners and through in-depth interviews with 8 of those learners. The results show that learners’ perceived high levels of attitudinal learning on the topic of smart cities across four categories of learning outcomes (general, cognitive, affective and behavioural). Our findings also contribute to an understanding of the types of post-course activities learners participate in and their experiences of trying to apply what they learnt if they participated in local smart city activities. We conclude by providing new insights into how to design for learning to support social change in the context of a MOOC.
KW - Distance education and telelearning
KW - Evaluation methodologies
KW - Learning communities
KW - Lifelong learning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055924643&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.compedu.2018.10.012
DO - 10.1016/j.compedu.2018.10.012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055924643
SN - 0360-1315
VL - 129
SP - 37
EP - 47
JO - Computers and Education
JF - Computers and Education
ER -