While at the Technion (2021–2022), I co-developed an undergraduate-level online learning environment about Science Communication.
This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was designed to cater to:
(1) science & technology researchers and researchers-in-training;
(2) undergraduate students in STEM subjects and pre-service teachers; and
(3) experts in any technical domain.
My colleagues and I sought to help learners to communicate about their fields of expertise directly with decision-makers and diverse publics, or through media professionals and other intermediaries.
My Contributions
- Co-Developing the Learning Environment
- I co-developed most of the materials and activities that accompanied the videos in the learning environment (55,000 words in total, accompanying over 20 hours of video. It’s about as long as a 200-page book).
- These materials and activities were originally developed in Hebrew, with an Israeli audience in mind.
- My responsibilities included: - Locating and adapting scholarly texts and other relevant resources; and - Co-designing activities and writing informational texts according to instructional design principles.
- Translation and Internationalization
- Operations
After the Hebrew version was completed, we set out to make the entire learning environment available in English for an international audience.
To that end, I procured the services of two freelance translators, reviewed their deliverables, and provided extensive feedback.
Throughout the process, I planned and coordinated work with various stakeholders, including several service providers: - an eLearning developer; - a subtitling company; and - a copy editor (for the Hebrew texts). I reviewed all of these contractors’ deliverables and provided them with feedback in this case as well.
Fun fact: Faced with the challenge of organizing hundreds of subtitle files that were sent to me piecemeal as e-mail attachments, I used Make.com and Airtable to organize everything semi-automatically. What a ride.
Learner Testimonial
I had never imagined I’d be learning this way here at the Technion. […] I recommended the course to a mathematician friend, who had told me that he’d been having a hard time explaining his work to non-mathematicians.
We were able to come up with a more user-friendly way to talk about his research topic.”
— Guy S., undergraduate engineering student (January 2024)
Funding
This project was supported by grants from:
- the Israeli Council for Higher Education,
- the Ministry of Education, and
- the Digital Israel Bureau at the National Digital Agency.
