UPGRADING MOOC STUDENTS' ENGAGEMENT AND PARTICIPATION IN HUMANITIES-ORIENTED ONLINE COURSES: THE EXAMPLE OF THE MOOC BASED ON THE PROJECT “DETECT”

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have become a grounded reality and a stable concept in the distance education panorama with worldwide universities continuously creating and offering every year broad selections of online courses. Nevertheless, despite the many developments in terms of individual and distance learning approaches, it is indetermined if MOOCs can deliver effective pedagogical methods and tools suitable for the implementation of online courses in the categories of art and humanities as well as in creating environments that give equal space to the two complementary layers of distance learning and distant teaching. Consequently, also the development of a valid, and captivating e-learning experience able to effectively reach out to students of different backgrounds, creating an impactful learning community represents a challenge. This issue acquires certain relevance particularly in relation to the much-debated question around the most effective pedagogical methodology to deliver humanities-oriented knowledge in a distant learning context. This paper provides an overview of the educational and pedagogical formulas adopted for the creation of a MOOC on European Crime Fiction, currently being developed in the framework of DETECt – Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives (https://www.detect-project.eu/) a project funded by European’s Union Horizon 2020. The MOOC concept presented in the framework of this research concentrates on the development of mixed e-learning and e-teaching strategies, that leverages the application of pedagogical elements like social network and independent learning and combines them with users’ engagement methods. On the one hand, this research aims to challenge the debate related to the effectiveness of teaching and learning a humanities-oriented subject in a distance learning environment. On the other hand, intends to recreate a vibrant learning community capable of broadening the academic research carried out by the project enabling the collaboration between the MOOC public and the researchers and teachers.