Massive Open Online Courses – MOOCs – are now firmly established in university teaching. Inquisitive people of all age groups and educational levels benefit from these online courses, which are freely accessible in the internet. And Styria is one step ahead of the whole of Austria when it comes to MOOCS. The University of Graz and TU Graz have been moving in international MOOC waters with their iMOOX.at platform for a number of years, accompanied by US elite universities, such as Harvard and Stanford. Now international experts are meeting in Graz in the framework of the European MOOCs Stakeholder Summit (EMOOCs) from 22 to 24 February 2016. EMOOCs is jointly organised by the Uni Graz and TU Graz. The goal of the conference is to discuss the extra didactic value of MOOCs and to describe suitable use cases for the efficient and student-centred running of MOOCs.
Trends in massive open online courses
The approximately 150 participants from Europe, Japan, Jordan, Chile, Guatemala and USA are meeting for the fourth time, and this is the first time it will be held in Austria. The conference offers higher education teachers, academics and even companies a platform for exchange to discuss current trends in the field of massive open online courses. The programme of the conference, which is held in English, apart from both keynotes, comprises a total of 37 specialised talks, five panel discussions and several workshops.
MOOCs have meanwhile become a recognised learning and teaching form in higher education teaching. Their extremely broad range is still associated with some challenges, which the conference will pay special attention to. For example, the allocation of ECTS credits to MOOCs, their integration in the curricula and their basic position in the general strategic considerations of higher education institutes. In the run-up to the conference, a so-called pre-conference MOOC will be offered on the platform www.imoox.at in which selected contributions to the conference will be introduced. These contributions will be presented in so-called flipped mode during the conference. In other words, the contents will not be introduced in a talk, but rather discussed by those participating in the MOOCs together with lecturers.
