Most FING courses have two mid-term exams with a pass mark of 60%. The lecture halls for the initial years of most programmes are overcrowded. Student participation is expected and appreciated at any stage.

FING is a large faculty, with approximately 10.000 enrolled students and more than 900 teachers to cover 20 programmes in Engineering. This work presents OpenFING, an educational initiative based on a digital library of filmed courses, that has the support of students, teachers and learning technologists who collaborate in the development of the OpenFING Project at Facultad de Ingeniería (FING), which is the Engineering School of the Universidad de la República (UdelaR), the major university in Uruguay (with approximately 145.000 students). In all these methodologies there is generally an online platform where students and teachers can interact. Class time is used to work on the concepts involved, with the guidance of a teacher. For example, a student is asked to watch a learning video, read certain material, or participate in an online learning exercise before class. In flipped learning (flipped classroom) the delivery method in traditional learning is reversed. The online learning includes, for instance, the use of videos, online reading material and online assignments. Blended learning is a combination of online and traditional learning (face-to-face learning).

This variety of available resources promotes the implementation of new teaching and learning methodologies, such as blended learning and flipped learning. Open policies can change from site to site, and resources can be video-based, as well as text-based, but most of the resources use video. Likewise, private organizations also publish courses: Khan, Udemy, etc. For instance, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare and the Open University’s initiative OpenLearn.

Many universities disseminate their courses openly on the Internet as part of a policy that encompasses the publication of the knowledge imparted.

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