Educational Yin&Yang: Towards a Framework for the Instructional Design of MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are designed and developed in many ways, often paying more attention to the content of the course itself (e.g., videos, exercises, animations, texts…) than to the way the content is structured to achieve more efficient learning. We present a framework for encapsulating the content of the MOOC from an educational perspective. The metaphor used for it is that of Yin&Yang, a principle of dualism that sustains that everything in the universe is composed of two parts: a passive, receptive part and an active one. Also, in education, there is a passive part from the standpoint of the learner, namely the lecture or explanation of the facts by the educator, and an active part, where the learner must solve quizzes or problems, do projects, or create artifacts. It is important that these two parts go hand in hand. So, we define the concept of an educational pill embracing the Yin&Yang duality. This pattern can also be applied recursively when composing educational pills.