Federal Funding Opportunity Announcements as a Catalyst of Students’ Projects in MOOC Environments

Our research group is currently engaged in an enhanced learning environment, within higher education, using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in combination with Innovation-Based Learning (IBL). Both approaches to learning when arranged correctly, improve students learning and engagement towards the course. When using IBL, one of the main problems that students experience is the selection of their class project. We propose a methodology based on funding opportunity announcements (FOA) to aid in the selection process. Student groups are able to quickly compare and match their skills and interests to market demand as expressed by groups such as NIH or NSF. The students in the class experience a blended approach; they collaborate online and in-class, and they apply knowledge acquired from online content to their main project. In this blended approach, FOAs act as a catalyst to students’ learning; it both focuses them at the beginning and motivates them throughout the course. Students in this MOOC-enabled learning ecosystem grow in their intrinsic motivation and engagement. Furthermore, FOAs project selection solves scalability issues when dealing with inter-disciplinary projects and availability of proper experts/mentors for students. This tailored combination improves efficiency and targets project’s relevance, which makes it very attractive to higher education administrators.