High School Open On-line Courses (HOOC): A Case Study from Italy

The first implementation of complete high school, open on-line courses (HOOC) aiming to support the training and basic scientific knowledge of young students from the Liceo Ginnasio Dante Alighieri in Gorizia, Italy, is discussed. Using the open source and automated recording system openEyA, HOOC give a student the opportunity to watch on-line, at their own place and own pace, the same lessons of physics and mathematics held in the classroom. It is found that high school students’ have changed the traditional modality of study and their scores have systematically improved since the implementation of this project. In only few months the use by students of the www.OpenDante.it video archive for HOOC has growth from 30 % to 97 %. Feedback from students and Parents on the use and impact of making HOOC available on the web are encouraging.