High School Interns Partnering With Learning Engineers for MOOC Innovation

MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) development requires a wide range of skills and expertise (e.g., graphic design, coding, accessibility, data analysis, etc.). Learning engineers apply these skills to create courses, informed by their knowledge of the learning sciences, data collection and analysis, and the topic discipline. Part of this creation process may consist of narrow, well-defined tasks that short-term, part-time employees can execute, particularly those with specific technological or subject-matter backgrounds. In this paper, we report on a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Digital Learning Lab (DLL, an interdisciplinary community of practice for learning engineers) and the Empowr program (a nonprofit focused on building the school-to-career pipeline for the low-income community) to engage high school interns in MOOC development. These DLL-Empowr interns had broad interests in technology and a willingness to learn new skills. Learning engineers trained and directed the student interns on discrete projects relevant to the mission of the Digital Learning Lab. Through their engagement with these projects, DLL-Empowr interns built new skills during course development and deepened their insight into the learning process from an instructional perspective. Interns interacted with their DLL supervisors beyond the scope of their projects to discuss interpersonal skills, study and work strategies, and college preparedness. Ultimately, DLL-Empowr interns gained knowledge and confidence about how people (including themselves) learn while contributing to courses that reach thousands worldwide each year. With the success of the initial pilot program, we are continuing the DLL-Empowr collaboration this summer and beyond.