Recasting a Traditional Course into a MOOC by Means of a SPOC

We give a practical approach to recast an existing, mature traditional university course into a MOOC. The approach has two steps. The first step consists in transforming the existing course into a course with two tracks: a SPOC and a traditional track. This step is done concurrently with teaching the course. The second step, which takes place one semester later, is the opening of the SPOC to the world as a MOOC. We have implemented this approach with the course LFSAB1402 Informatics 2, a second-year bachelor university-level programming course taught to all engineering students at Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), that is, approximately 300 students per year. The approach has four advantages. First, it allows to design a SPOC covering only part of the material of the traditional course. A 5 credit (ECTS) one-semester course has almost twice the material of a six-week MOOC with two/three-hour lessons per week. Second, the workload of the transformation is reduced. It can be done incrementally during the teaching of the traditional course. Third, it allows us to gain experience in the world of MOOCs in a relative painless manner. And fourth, since the transformation is a large step, the risk of having problems in the final MOOC is reduced.