The Environment and Sustainable Development Virtual University (Uved) knows how to raise awareness on environmental issues through its online learning options ("Mooc" for "Massive open online courses"). The last Mooc, offered in late 2017 thanks to the Veolia Foundation's financial support, exceeded all expectations 11,061 people enrolled to follow the course dedicated to ecological engineering launched in October for four weeks. This number of people, which is a record for the Uved, all Moocs combined, testifies to increasingly broader public interest in the subject.
Students learned about basic concepts before being made aware of the challenges to be taken up (restoration, compensation, agro-ecology, etc.) and the ethical, legal, political, economic, and anthropological frameworks of ecological engineering.
The audience was varied: exactly 50/50 men and women, 48% under-30s, students (21%), people in employment (55%), 23% from natural sciences, and 60% from many other fields... Students were mainly French (72%) but this ratio should evolve with the upcoming availability of the course in English and Spanish in early 2018. All Mooc videos are freely accessible on the Uved portal under a Creative Commons License.
A Veolia engineer among the speakers
Christelle Pagotto, Water and Water Resources Engineer at Veolia Water, participated in the Mooc as a speaker. She was one of the many experts mobilized under the management of Luc Abbadie who is an ecologist and Professor at the University Pierre and Marie Curie as well as Director of the Bioemco Laboratory / Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris (CNRS UPMC, IRD, INRA, UPEC, ENS).