MOOC on biomedical engineering for Latin American students. Unleashing the potential of virtual learning

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have commanded considerable public attention due to their sudden rise and disruptive potential. As a very promising area, the biomedical world offers the integration between several domains, complementing medicine with engineering topics. This work has been focused primarily over a MOOC delivered in Spanish, covering the introductory ideas of biomedical engineering and posing a holistic view of the subject. This MOOC on biomedical engineering was the first of its kind in Latin America, creating a stir in the Ibero-American community of biomedical engineering. Centering this work, a platform has been proposed which would act as a point of connection and collaboration in biomedical engineering. This would open up new possibilities of collaborative innovation besides catering the subject to the prospective students in an interesting way, so that before taking up a career in biomedical engineering, they could have an introductory and holistic view to it. The platform would also open up a common stage of partnership between universities and associations of biomedical engineering, giving the learning community an opportunity to gain from collaborative learning. Industrial partnership with the platform would shape the profile of graduated students versatile, allowing their instantaneous incorporation to the competitive market in this vast field. Pertaining to this perspective, the prospective impact of virtual learning has been explored.