Cases & Voices

How to educate an increasingly wider audience to move towards a sustainable and efficient management of water resources, positively impacting the economic development in Chile? This was the challenge of the Center for Technological Research of Water in the Desert, CEITSAZA, dedicated to research and technological development for the sustainable and efficient management of water resources, mainly in arid areas, in an environmentally friendly manner.

(Source: REUNA) Created by the Catholic University of the North and financed by the InnovaChile Program of Corfo, the center develops R&D projects and offers technological advisory services and continuous training. That is why having a tool that allows it to expand the number of students in its courses is essential, to fulfill its mission and achieve national and international positioning. And the chosen solution was Studia, the REUNA platform for open and massive online courses (better known as MOOC, for its acronym in English).

Thanks to Studia, Ceitsaza offered, in August 2017, its first course "Membrane Desalination Technologies", developed in conjunction with the industry to respond to the problems of water resources and water quality, in the macro area north and in Chile in general. As Loreto Araya, Ceitsaza Project Engineer explains, "this academic activity was open to all audiences, with emphasis on students, professionals and technicians with basic knowledge about desalination. As a result, 207 students enrolled, of which 119 finished the course." The success of the first version motivated the Center to make a second version this year, already launched on October 29.

Regarding the use of the platform, Araya comments that "Studia presents a friendly and intuitive platform for interaction with the presented contents", this being the main advantage of the service compared to other MOOC platforms, both for the institution that dictates the course and for the end users.

Asked if she would recommend other teachers to join this global trend and create their courses in Studia, her response is positive and stresses that "Studia is not only a platform of free access to theoretical knowledge, but also allows to know the work experience of the participants of the different courses". This, thanks to evaluations carried out by each module and the participation of students in the forum, enabled on the same platform to promote interaction.

For more information about this service, go to www.studia.cl. To see the presentation video of the course, go to www.studia.cl/courses/cursoceitsaza2