Mooqita: Empowering Hidden Talents with a Novel Work-Learn Model

We present a case study of Mooqita, a platform to support learners in online courses by enabling them to earn money, gather real job task experiences, and build a meaningful portfolio. This includes placing optional additional assignments in online courses. Learners solve these individual assignments, provide peer reviews for other learners, and give feedback on each review they receive. Based on these data points teams are selected to work on a final paid assignment. Companies offer these assignments and in return receive interview recommendations from the pool of learners together with solutions for their challenges. We report the results of a pilot deployment in an online programming course offered by UC BerkeleyX. Six learners out of 158 participants were selected for the paid group assignment paying $600 per person. Four of these six were invited for interviews at the participating companies Crowdbotics (2) and Telefonica Innovation Alpha (2).