ABSTRACT
The academic Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) “Innovative Teaching in the New Media Age” combined 10 self-study online video lessons with individual advisory Zoom meetings and was studied by Israeli students of education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The course aims to train social-educational entrepreneurs and implement new media tools in educational project plans. Research methods included a survey of 107 students, and a qualitative thematic content analysis of 76 project plans and 81 online Zoom meetings. The research studied the characteristics of new media-based project plans and the contributions of the advisory meetings to their formulations.
The findings explore the essential contributions of Zoom advisory meetings to project plans’ formulation, focus, integration, and adaptation to audience needs. Findings showed that only 31% of students preferred FTF advisory meetings instead of Zoom. 76% of project plans were aimed to empower a specific target group. Only 16% of the project plans were aimed to empower intergroup relations.
