A Microservice-Based MOOL in Acoustics Addressing the Learning-at-Scale Scenario

Online education is evolving at a fast pace thanks to novel technology-mediated learning environments: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), gamified learning, intelligent tutoring systems, citizen-science communities, informal learning groups are blossoming everywhere as novel opportunities for teachers and learners. However, the educational effectiveness of these solutions has to be proved and technological choices have to cope with scalability and increasing resource demands. This is the area of the Learning-at-Scale (L@S), whose aim is to involve large amounts of educational practitioners globally. The present research paper addresses the L@S context from the Massive Open Online Labs (MOOLs) perspective, as one of its most promising evolutions. Two technological paradigms are examined: the Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS), which allows to scale on the number of involved users thanks to their mobile devices, and the Microservices Architectures (MSAs), which permit to scale selectively any educational platform architecture. A complete proposal for a L@S based platform aimed at engaging students in mobile-mediated scientific monitoring activities in the area of acoustics is presented. Modeling and implementation aspects as well as the validation from both a technical and educational perspectives is discussed.