Adaptation, design and implementation of engineering education to limited internet access

Abstract – This paper is a description of the design and implementation of a course within the project USo+I: Universidad, Sociedad e Innovación financed by the European Union, within the ALFA III program. The course was an introduction to the handling of Learning Management Systems (LMS) first conducted at Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría, Facultad de Ingeniería Eléctrica, Havana, Cuba. The course was divided as two weeks of on-campus lectures and workshops followed by distance learning for three months, altogether corresponding to ten weeks of full time studies. Pedagogically and methodically the course was planned within the concept of Problem Based Learning (PBL). All course material was open educational resources freely available on the internet. The design of the course also had to consider the problems of limited access to computers and internet, both during the course and in the lecturers´ future practice. The solution was to have the LMS “Moodle” and other software executable from USB-memories and all course material available from the same USB-memory sticks. How this design can meet the given considerations is discussed.Sponsorship:This work has been produced with financial assistance from the European Community, contract DCIALA/ 19.09.01/08/19189/160-922/ALFA III-9