Developing ‘The Science Behind Beer’ MOOC

By Yovita Astuti Djohan / MSc Biotechnology

Together with 17 motivated MSc and BSc students, we have been making a Massive Open Online Course (see: edx.org) about ‘The Science of Beer’ since last October 2017. This is an amazing project which inspired and motivated me, because it is made for worldwide students in upcoming April 2018!

Me in one of the videos of my chapter.

Preparing

The project was initiated with several workshops and training sessions about how to make proper knowledge clips and assignments. We started with making a project plan and presented this to our fellow students to make sure everyone was on the same pace. We met experts in fields related to beer, instructional designers and studio experts with whom we had fruitful discussions.

Personally, I enjoy working on this project a lot. Currently, I work with five friends to create all learning content for the Beer Production Module. We gather every week to update each other, plan our next moves and discuss other details. Sometimes we meet for friendly dinner as well.

Working hard during our first module meeting.

Scripting

I am in charge of the chapter entitled “Processing Steps”, which includes the writing of scripts and assignments. In this first chapter, learners will explore the main steps involved in beer production. One thing I realize is that you need to be aware of your writing style when making the scripts for knowledge clips. It is different from academic writing, which most of us students normally do for reports, assignment and thesis. On one hand, you need to gain attention from the learners by writing communicative sentences, making it exciting and keep it lively. On the other hand, you need to make sure that the proposed concepts are delivered through these scripts and make sure that the way it is written is not misleading or ambiguous.

I learned a lot from the feedback from my team members and experts, which helped me to continuously improve the scripts

Filming

Besides the writing of the scripts, I was also responsible for the recording of the knowledge clips of my chapter. We received a studio training to properly speak in front of camera and we learned how to make a vlog as well. The studio training was unexpectedly fun! I was a bit nervous, knowing that I will be the actor for all my scripts. But once I tried recording, it gets fun and cool. I really feel that the more I practice, the more comfortable it becomes.

Practicing with recording during the studio training.

Me filming Rodrigo from the marketing module with the OSMO device during the vlog workshop.

Curious to see more?

So far, it’s been a great experience. It’s still work in progress now…

Definitely, it is going to be super epic when the course is on air on the 24^th of April!