A Purposeful MOOC to Alleviate Insufficient CS Education in Finnish Schools

Autor/inn/en	Kurhila, Jaakko; Vihavainen, Arto
Titel	A Purposeful MOOC to Alleviate Insufficient CS Education in Finnish Schools
Quelle	In: ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 15 (2015) 2, Artikel 10 (18 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1946-6226
DOI	10.1145/2716314
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Online Courses; Computer Science; Computer Science Education; Distance Education; College Instruction; College Entrance Examinations; Access to Education; Educational Policy; Teacher Qualifications; Educational History; Student Recruitment; Gender Differences; Programming; Age Differences; Comparative Analysis; Finland + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; Online course; Online-Kurs; Informatik; Computer science lessons; Informatikunterricht; Distance study; Distance learning; Fernunterricht; Hochschullehre; Aufnahmeprüfung; Education; Access; Bildung; Zugang; Bildungszugang; Politics of education; Bildungspolitik; Lehrqualifikation; History of education; Bildungsgeschichte; Geschlechterkonflikt; Programmierung; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Finnland
Abstract	The Finnish national school curriculum, effective from 2004, does not include any topics related to Computer Science (CS). To alleviate the problem that school students are not able to study CS-related topics, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki prepared a completely online course that is open to pupils and students in all schools in Finland. The course is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), as the attendance scales without an upper bound. Schools in Finland have offered the MOOC as an elective CS course for their students and granted formal school credits for completing (parts of) it. Since our MOOC is exactly the same programming course as our university-level CS1 course, we are able to use the MOOC also as a long-lasting entrance exam to the CS BSc and MSc degrees. After two spring semesters of operation, we have observed that there are school students dispersed around Finland who are ready and willing to take on a challenging programming course online, and bridging the MOOC to a full study right makes a strong incentive to keep working on the programming assignments, even without traditional teaching. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Association for Computing Machinery. 2 Penn Plaza Suite 701, New York, NY 10121. Tel: 800-342-6626; Tel: 212-626-0500; Fax: 212-944-1318; e-mail: acmhelp@acm.org; Web site: http://toce.acm.org/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01