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Diversity is a term that is broadly used and challenging for informatics research, development and education. Diversity concerns may relate to unequal participation, knowledge and methodology, curricula, institutional planning etc. For a lot of these areas, measures, guidelines and best practices on diversity awareness exist. A systemic, sustainable impact of diversity measures on informatics is still largely missing. In this paper I explore what working with diversity and gender concepts in informatics entails, what the main challenges are and provide thoughts for improvement. The paper includes definitions of diversity and intersectionality, reflections on the disciplinary basis of informatics and practical implications of integrating diversity in informatics research and development. In the final part, two concepts from the social sciences and the humanities, the notion of “third space”/hybridity and the notion of “feminist ethics of care”, serve as a lens to foster more sustainable ways of working with diversity in informatics.
Ethical issues surrounding modern computing technologies play an increasingly important role in the public debate. Yet, ethics still either doesn’t appear at all or only to a very small extent in computer science degree programs. This paper provides an argument for the value of ethics beyond a pure responsibility perspective and describes the positive value of ethical debate for future computer scientists. It also provides a systematic analysis of the module handbooks of 67 German universities and shows that there is indeed a lack of ethics in computer science education. Finally, we present a principled design of a compulsory course for undergraduate students.
While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is scarce to non-existent. This is problematic because both theoretical and empirical evidence show that the position in the wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge.We measure ex-ante IOp in net wealth for Germany using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ex-ante IOp is defined as the contribution of circumstances to the inequality in net wealth before effort is exerted. The SOEP allows for a direct mapping from individual circumstances to individual net wealth and for a detailed decomposition of net wealth inequality into a variety of circumstances; among them childhood background, intergenerational transfers, and regional characteristics. The ratio of inequality of opportunity to total inequality is stable from 2002 to 2019. This is in sharp contrast to labor earnings, where ex-ante IOp is declining over time. Our estimates suggest that about 62% of the inequality in net wealth is due to circumstances. The most important circumstances are intergenerational transfers, parental occupation, and the region of birth. In contrast, gender and individuals’ own education are the most important circumstances for earnings.
In the past decades, scholars and courts have paid considerable attention to the extraterritorial applicability of human rights treaties. By contrast, the extraterritorial application of constitutional rights has received comparable scholarly attention only in the United States. Specifically, there is a paucity of comparative research in this area, which contributes to the prevailing view that human rights law provides the proper framework under which domestic courts should examine extraterritoriality questions under constitutional law.
This article argues that domestic constitutional regimes and their judicial enforcers can and should provide an important counterweight to the deadlocked extraterritoriality debate at the international level. Using two case studies from Germany and the United States, it shows that domestic constitutional courts are sometimes better suited than treaty bodies to guard the normative values of human dignity and universality in an extraterritoriality context. This is most apparent in the case of Germany, which has a long tradition of integration into international multi-level governance systems and "bottom-up" resistance based on fundamental rights within such systems. Recent cases from the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) about the extraterritorial application of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) to foreign intelligence gathering and climate change support this theory. However, an independent constitutional approach can also achieve some normative effects in domestic systems that are more isolated from the international human rights system. Thus, the US Supreme Court likewise used domestic constitutional doctrine to sidestep the American government's strictly territorial interpretation of the ICCPR and employ a functional approach to the extraterritorial applicability of fundamental rights in the case of detention of suspected terrorists in the Guantánamo Bay naval base.
The study of these two examples does not purport to be comprehensive or even representative of the world’s diverse array of constitutions and their relationships with international human rights law. However, the independent power of constitutional frameworks in these two disparate cases should all the more provide an impetus for increased comparative research into constitutional extraterritoriality regimes and their value for the project of human rights.
Supporting reflection in preservice during university-based training is, without doubt, a crucial aspect in attaining teacher professionalism. Therefore, an on-campus seminar designed to relate theory to practice and vice versa – the so-called ‘Lehr-Lern-Labor-Seminar (LLLS)’ – was implemented over the course of five terms to stimulate reflective skills of English and Physics teacher trainees. Investigations on the effectiveness of three types of the LLLS (no video and two types of video-supported reflections) compared to a parallel group (PG) and a control group (CG) occurred in a mixed methods quasi-experimental study. Reflective skills were elicited with vignettes, relevant covariates with questionnaires. Reflective development was then traced in the dimensions depth and breadth employing a qualitative content analysis. MANCOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Covariance) and regression analyses revealed a substantive increase of reflective depth for English and Physics teacher trainees and breadth development for English LLLS-participants in contrast to both, a PG and a CG, even when controlling for the subjects’ individual prerequisites.
National Action Plans (NAPs) have been increas-ingly adopted world-wide after the Vienna Dec-laration in 1993, where it was urged to consider the improvement and promotion of Human Rights. In this paper, we discuss their usefulness and success by analysing the challenges present-ed during NAP processes as well as the benefits this set of actions entails: The challenges for their implementation outweigh its actual benefits. Nevertheless, NAPs have great potential. Based on new research, we elaborate a set of recom-mendations for improving the design and imple-mentation of national action planning. In order to effectively bring NAP into practice, we consider it crucial to plan and analyse every state local circumstances in detail. The latter is important, since the implementation of a concrete set of actions is intended to directly transform and improve the local living conditions of the people. In a long-term perspective, we defend the benefit of NAP’s implementation for complying obliga-tions set up by HR treaties.
A degree course in IT and business administration solely for women (FIW) has been offered since 2009 at the HTW Berlin – University of Applied Sciences. This contribution discusses student motivations for enrolling in such a women only degree course and gives details of our experience over recent years. In particular, the approach to attracting new female students is described and the composition of the intake is discussed. It is shown that the women-only setting together with other factors can attract a new clientele for computer science.
The integration of MOOCs into the Moroccan Higher Education (MHE) took place in 2013 by developing different partnerships and projects at national and international levels. As elsewhere, the Covid-19 crisis has played an important role in accelerating distance education in MHE. However, based on our experience as both university professors and specialists in educational engineering, the effective execution of the digital transition has not yet been implemented. Thus, in this article, we present a retrospective feedback of MOOCs in Morocco, focusing on the policies taken by the government to better support the digital transition in general and MOOCs in particular. We are therefore seeking to establish an optimal scenario for the promotion of MOOCs, which emphasizes the policies to be considered, and which recalls the importance of conducting a delicate articulation taking into account four levels, namely environmental, institutional, organizational and individual. We conclude with recommendations that are inspired by the Moroccan academic contex that focus on the major role that MOOCs plays for university students and on maintaining lifelong learning.
Thai MOOC academy
(2023)
Thai MOOC Academy is a national digital learning platform that has been serving as a mechanism for promoting lifelong learning in Thailand since 2017. It has recently undergone significant improvements and upgrades, including the implementation of a credit bank system and a learner’s eportfolio system interconnected with the platform. Thai MOOC Academy is introducing a national credit bank system for accreditation and management, which allows for the transfer of expected learning outcomes and educational qualifications between formal education, non-formal education, and informal education. The credit bank system has five distinct features, including issuing forgery-prevented certificates, recording learning results, transferring external credits within the same wallet, accumulating learning results, and creating a QR code for verification purposes. The paper discusses the features and future potential of Thai MOOC Academy, as it is extended towards a sandbox for the national credit bank system in Thailand.
How to reuse inclusive stem Moocs in blended settings to engage young girls to scientific careers
(2023)
The FOSTWOM project (2019–2022), an ERASMUS+ funding, gave METID (Politecnico di Milano) and the MOOC Técnico (Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon), together with other partners, the opportunity to support the design and creation of gender-inclusive MOOCs. Among other project outputs, we designed a toolkit and a framework that enabled the production of two MOOCs for undergraduate and graduate students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and used them as academic content free of gender stereotypes about intellectual ability. In this short paper, the authors aim to 1) briefly share the main outputs of the project; 2) tell the story of how the FOSTWOM approach together with 3) a motivational strategy, the Heroine’s Learning Journey, proved to be effective in the context of rural and marginal areas in Brazil, with young girls as a specific target audience.
Academia-industry collaborations are beneficial when both sides bring strengths to the partnership and the collaboration outcome is of mutual benefit. These types of collaboration projects are seen as a low-risk learning opportunity for both parties. In this paper, government initiatives that can change the business landscape and academia-industry collaborations that can provide upskilling opportunities to fill emerging business needs are discussed. In light of Japan’s push for next-level modernization, a Japanese software company took a positive stance towards building new capabilities outside what it had been offering its customers. Consequently, an academic research group is laying out infrastructure for learning analytics research. An existing learning analytics dashboard was modularized to allow the research group to focus on natural language processing experiments while the software company explores a development framework suitable for data visualization techniques and artificial intelligence development. The results of this endeavor demonstrate that companies working with academia can creatively explore collaborations outside typical university-supported avenues.
“One video fit for all”
(2023)
Online learning in mathematics has always been challenging, especially for mathematics in STEM education. This paper presents how to make “one fit for all” lecture videos for mathematics in STEM education. In general, we do believe that there is no such thing as “one fit for all” video. The curriculum requires a high level of prior knowledge in mathematics from high school to get a good understanding, and the variation of prior knowledge levels among STEM education students is often high. This creates challenges for both online teaching and on-campus teaching. This article presents experimenting and researching on a video format where students can get a real-time feeling, and which fits their needs regarding their existing prior knowledge. They have the possibility to ask and receive answers during the video without having to feel that they must jump into different sources, which helps to reduce unnecessary distractions. The fundamental video format presented here is that of dynamic branching videos, which has to little degree been researched in education related studies. The reason might be that this field is quite new for higher education, and there is relatively high requirement on the video editing skills from the teachers’ side considering the platforms that are available so far. The videos are implemented for engineering students who take the Linear Algebra course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in spring 2023. Feedback from the students gathered via anonymous surveys so far (N = 21) is very positive. With the high suitability for online teaching, this video format might lead the trend of online learning in the future. The design and implementation of dynamic videos in mathematics in higher education was presented for the first time at the EMOOCs conference 2023.
This paper investigates private university students’ language learning activities in MOOC platforms and their attitude toward it. The study explores the development of MOOC use in Chinese private universities, with a focus on two modes: online et blended. We conducted empirical studies with students learning French and Japanese as a second foreign language, using questionnaires (N = 387) and interviews (N = 20) at a private university in Wuhan. Our results revealed that the majority of students used the MOOC platform more than twice a week and focused on the MOOC video, materials and assignments. However, we also found that students showed less interest in online communication (forums). Those who worked in the blended learning mode, especially Japanese learning students, had a more positive attitude toward MOOCs than other students.
The TU Delft Extension School for Continuing Education develops and delivers MOOCs, programs and other online courses for lifelong learners and professionals worldwide focused on Science, Engineering & Design. At the beginning of 2022, we started a project to examine whether creating an online course had any impact on TU Delft campus education. Through a survey, we collected feedback from 68 TU Delft lecturers involved in developing and offering online courses and programs for lifelong learners and professionals. The lecturers reported on the impact of developing an online course on a personal and curricular level. The results showed that the developed online materials, and the acquired skills and experiences from creating online courses, were beneficial for campus education, especially during the transition to remote emergency teaching in the COVID-19 lockdown periods. In this short paper, we will describe the responses in detail and map the benefits and challenges experienced by lecturers when implementing their online course materials and newly acquired educational skills on campus. Finally, we will explore future possibilities to extend the reported, already relevant, impact of MOOCs and of other online courses on campus education.
Innovat MOOC
(2023)
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance for university teachers to have adequate pedagogical and technological competences to cope with the various possible educational scenarios (face-to-face, online, hybrid, etc.), making use of appropriate active learning methodologies and supporting technologies to foster a more effective learning environment. In this context, the InnovaT project has been an important initiative to support the development of pedagogical and technological competences of university teachers in Latin America through several trainings aiming to promote teacher innovation. These trainings combined synchronous online training through webinars and workshops with asynchronous online training through the MOOC “Innovative Teaching in Higher Education.” This MOOC was released twice. The first run took place right during the lockdown of 2020, when Latin American teachers needed urgent training to move to emergency remote teaching overnight. The second run took place in 2022 with the return to face-to-face teaching and the implementation of hybrid educational models. This article shares the results of the design of the MOOC considering the constraints derived from the lockdowns applied in each country, the lessons learned from the delivery of such a MOOC to Latin American university teachers, and the results of the two runs of the MOOC.
The massive growth of MOOCs in 2011 laid the groundwork for the achievement of SDG 4. With the various benefits of MOOCs, there is also anticipation that online education should focus on more interactivity and global collaboration. In this context, the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance (GMA) established a diverse group of 17 world-leading universities and three online education platforms from across 14 countries on all six continents in 2020. Through nearly three years of exploration, GMA has gained experience and achieved progress in fostering global cooperation in higher education. First, in joint teaching, GMA has promoted in-depth cooperation between members inside and outside the alliance. Examples include promoting the exchange of high-quality MOOCs, encouraging the creation of Global Hybrid Classroom, and launching Global Hybrid Classroom Certificate Programs. Second, in capacity building and knowledge sharing, GMA has launched Online Education Dialogues and the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference, inviting global experts to share best practices and attracting more than 10 million viewers around the world. Moreover, GMA is collaborating with international organizations to support teachers’ professional growth, create an online learning community, and serve as a resource for further development. Third, in public advocacy, GMA has launched the SDG Hackathon and Global Massive Open Online Challenge (GMOOC) and attracted global learners to acquire knowledge and incubate their innovative ideas within a cross-cultural community to solve real-world problems that all humans face and jointly create a better future. Based on past experiences and challenges, GMA will explore more diverse cooperation models with more partners utilizing advanced technology, provide more support for digital transformation in higher education, and further promote global cooperation towards building a human community with a shared future.
Founded in 2013, OpenClassrooms is a French online learning company that offers both paid courses and free MOOCs on a wide range of topics, including computer science and education. In 2021, in partnership with the EDA research unit, OpenClassrooms shared a database to solve the problem of how to increase persistence in their paid courses, which consist of a series of MOOCs and human mentoring. Our statistical analysis aims to identify reasons for dropouts that are due to the course design rather than demographic predictors or external factors.We aim to identify at-risk students, i.e. those who are on the verge of dropping out at a specific moment. To achieve this, we use learning analytics to characterize student behavior. We conducted data analysis on a sample of data related to the “Web Designers” and “Instructional Design” courses. By visualizing the student flow and constructing speed and acceleration predictors, we can identify which parts of the course need to be calibrated and when particular attention should be paid to these at-risk students.
This qualitative study explores the impact of Personalized Learning Experience (PLE) courses at a higher education institution from the perspective of undergraduate students. The PLE program requires students to take at least one of their elective courses in the form of MOOCs during their undergraduate studies. Drawing on interviews with six students across different faculties, the study identified four key themes that encapsulate the effects of PLE courses: (1) Certificate driven learning with a focus on occupation skill enhancement, (2) diverse course offerings to enhance personal and academic development, (3) learning flexibility, and (4) student satisfaction. The findings suggest that PLE courses offered through MOOC platforms allow students to broaden their academic horizons, gain valuable skills, and tailor their education to better align with their interests and goals. Furthermore, this study highlights the potential benefits of incorporating PLE courses in higher education institutions, emphasizing their role in promoting a more dynamic and student-centered learning environment.
This research paper provides an overview of the current state of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and universities in Austria, focusing on the national MOOC platform iMooX.at. The study begins by presenting the results of an analysis of the performance agreements of 22 Austrian public universities for the period 2022–2024, with a specific focus on the mention of MOOC activities and iMooX. The authors find that 12 of 22 (55 %) Austrian public universities use at least one of these terms, indicating a growing interest in MOOCs and online learning. Additionally, the authors analyze internal documentation data to share insights into how many universities in Austria have produced and/or used a MOOC on the iMooX platform since its launch in 2014. These findings provide a valuable measure of the current usage and monitoring of MOOCs and iMooX among Austrian higher education institutions. Overall, this research contributes to a better understanding of the current state of MOOCs and their integration within Austrian higher education.
Modularization describes the transformation of MOOCs from a comprehensive academic course format into smaller, more manageable learning offerings. It can be seen as one of the prerequisites for the successful implementation of MOOC-based micro-credentials in professional education and training. This short paper reports on the development and application of a modularization framework for Open Online Courses. Using the example of eGov-Campus, a German MOOC provider for the public sector linked to both academia and formal professional development, the structural specifications for modularized MOOC offerings and a methodology for course transformation as well as associated challenges in technology, organization and educational design are outlined. Following on from this, future prospects are discussed under the headings of individualization, certification and integration.
To implement OERs at HEIs sustainably, not just technical infrastructure is required, but also well-trained staff. The University of Graz is in charge of an OER training program for university staff as part of the collaborative project Open Education Austria Advanced (OEAA) with the aim of ensuring long-term competence growth in the use and creation of OERs. The program consists of a MOOC and a guided blended learning format that was evaluated to find out which accompanying teaching and learning concepts can best facilitate targeted competence development. The evaluation of the program shows that learning videos, self-study assignments and synchronous sessions are most useful for the learning process. The results indicate that the creation of OERs is a complex process that can be undergone more effectively in the guided program.
As Thailand moves towards becoming an innovation-driven economy, the need for human capital development has become crucial. Work-based skill MOOCs, offered on Thai MOOC, a national digital learning platform launched by Thailand Cyber University Project, ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, provide an effective way to overcome this challenge. This paper discusses the challenges faced in designing an instruction for work-based skill MOOCs that can serve as a foundation model for many more to come. The instructional design of work-based skill courses in Thai MOOC involves four simple steps, including course selection, learning from accredited providers, course requirements completion, and certification of acquired skills. The development of such courses is ongoing at the higher education level, vocational level, and pre-university level, which serve as a foundation model for many more work-based skill MOOC that will be offered on Thai MOOC soon. The instructional design of work-based skills courses should focus on the development of currently demanded professional competencies and skills, increasing the efficiency of work in the organization, creativity, and happiness in life that meets the human resources needs of industries in the 4.0 economy era in Thailand. This paper aims to present the challenges of designing instruction for work-based skill MOOCs and suggests effective ways to design instruction to enhance workforce development in Thailand.
The main aim of this article is to explore how learning analytics and synchronous collaboration could improve course completion and learner outcomes in MOOCs, which traditionally have been delivered asynchronously. Based on our experience with developing BigBlueButton, a virtual classroom platform that provides educators with live analytics, this paper explores three scenarios with business focused MOOCs to improve outcomes and strengthen learned skills.
This research paper aims to introduce a novel practitioner-oriented and research-based taxonomy of video genres. This taxonomy can serve as a scaffolding strategy to support educators throughout the entire educational system in creating videos for pedagogical purposes. A taxonomy of video genres is essential as videos are highly valued resources among learners. Although the use of videos in education has been extensively researched and well-documented in systematic research reviews, gaps remain in the literature. Predominantly, researchers employ sophisticated quantitative methods and similar approaches to measure the performance of videos. This trend has led to the emergence of a strong learning analytics research tradition with its embedded literature. This body of research includes analysis of performance of videos in online courses such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Surprisingly, this same literature is limited in terms of research outlining approaches to designing and creating educational videos, which applies to both video-based learning and online courses. This issue results in a knowledge gap, highlighting the need for developing pedagogical tools and strategies for video making. These can be found in frameworks, guidelines, and taxonomies, which can serve as scaffolding strategies. In contrast, there appears to be very few frameworks available for designing and creating videos for pedagogica purposes, apart from a few well-known frameworks. In this regard, this research paper proposes a novel taxonomy of video genres that educators can utilize when creating videos intended for use in either video-based learning environments or online courses. To create this taxonomy, a large number of videos from online courses were collected and analyzed using a mixed-method research design approach.
Digital technologies have enabled a variety of learning offers that opened new challenges in terms of recognition of formal, informal and non-formal learning, such as MOOCs.
This paper focuses on how providing relevant data to describe a MOOC is conducive to increase the transparency of information and, ultimately, the flexibility of European higher education.
The EU-funded project ECCOE took up these challenges and developed a solution by identifying the most relevant descriptors of a learning opportunity with a view to supporting a European system for micro-credentials. Descriptors indicate the specific properties of a learning opportunity according to European standards. They can provide a recognition framework also for small volumes of learning (micro-credentials) to support the integration of non-formal learning (MOOCs) into formal learning (e.g. institutional university courses) and to tackle skills shortage, upskilling and reskilling by acquiring relevant competencies. The focus on learning outcomes can facilitate the recognition of skills and competences of students and enhance both virtual and physical mobility and employability.
This paper presents two contexts where ECCOE descriptors have been adopted: the Politecnico di Milano MOOC platform (Polimi Open Knowledge – POK), which is using these descriptors as the standard information to document the features of its learning opportunities, and the EU-funded Uforest project on urban forestry, which developed a blended training program for students of partner universities whose MOOCs used the ECCOE descriptors.
Practice with ECCOE descriptors shows how they can be used not only to detail MOOC features, but also as a compass to design the learning offer. In addition, some rules of thumb can be derived and applied when using specific descriptors.
Loss of expertise in the fields of Nuclear- and Radio-Chemistry (NRC) is problematic at a scientific and social level. This has been addressed by developing a MOOC, in order to let students in scientific matters discover all the benefits of NRC to society and improving their awareness of this discipline. The MOOC “Essential Radiochemistry for Society” includes current societal challenges related to health, clean and sustainable energy for safety and quality of food and agriculture.
NRC teachers belonging to CINCH network were invited to use the MOOC in their teaching, according to various usage models: on the basis of these different experiences, some usage patterns were designed, describing context characteristics (number and age of students, course), activities’ scheduling and organization, results and students’ feedback, with the aim of encouraging the use of MOOCs in university teaching, as an opportunity for both lecturers and students. These models were the basis of a “toolkit for teachers”. By experiencing digital teaching resources created by different lecturers, CINCH teachers took a first meaningful step towards understanding the worth of Open Educational Resources (OER) and the importance of their creation, adoption and sharing for knowledge progress. In this paper, the entire path from MOOC concept to MOOC different usage models, to awareness-raising regarding OER is traced in conceptual stages.
In 2020, the project “iMooX – The MOOC Platform as a Service for all Austrian Universities” was launched. It is co-financed by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research. After half of the funding period, the project management wants to assess and share results and outcomes but also address (potential) additional “impacts” of the MOOC platform. Building upon work on OER impact assessment, this contribution describes in detail how the specific iMooX.at approach of impact measurement was developed. Literature review, stakeholder analysis, and problem-based interviews were the base for developing a questionnaire addressing the defined key stakeholder “MOOC creators”. The article also presents the survey results in English for the first time but focuses more on the development, strengths, and weaknesses of the selected methods. The article is seen as a contribution to the further development of impact assessment for MOOC platforms.
This short paper sets out to propose a novel and interesting learning design that facilitates for cooperative learning in which students do not conduct traditional group work in an asynchronous online education setting. This learning design will be explored in a Small Private Online Course (SPOC) among teachers and school managers at a teacher education. Such an approach can be made possible by applying specific criteria commonly used to define collaborative learning. Collaboration can be defined, among other things, as a structured way of working among students that includes elements of co-laboring. The cooperative learning design involves adapting various traditional collaborative learning approaches for use in an online learning environment. A critical component of this learning design is that students work on a self-defined case project related to their professional practices. Through an iterative process, students will receive ongoing feedback and formative assessments from instructors and follow students at specific points, meaning that co-constructing of knowledge and learning takes place as the SPOC progresses. This learning design can contribute to better learning experiences and outcomes for students, and be a valuable contribution to current research discussions on learning design in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
From MOOC to “2M-POC”
(2023)
IFP School develops and produces MOOCs since 2014. After the COVID-19 crisis, the demand of our industrial and international partners to offer continuous training to their employees increased drastically in an energy transition and sustainable mobility environment that finds itself in constant and rapid evolution. Therefore, it is time for a new format of digital learning tools to efficiently and rapidly train an important number of employees. To address this new demand, in a more and more digital learning environment, we have completely changed our initial MOOC model to propose an innovative SPOC business model mixing synchronous and asynchronous modules. This paper describes the work that has been done to transform our MOOCs to a hybrid SPOC model. We changed the format itself from a standard MOOC model of several weeks to small modules of one week average more adapted to our client’s demand. We precisely engineered the exchanges between learners and the social aspect all along the SPOC duration. We propose a multimodal approach with a combination of asynchronous activities like online module, exercises, and synchronous activities like webinars with experts, and after-work sessions. Additionally, this new format increases the number of uses of the MOOC resources by our professors in our own master programs.
With all these actions, we were able to reach a completion rate between 80 and 96% – total enrolled –, compared to the completion rate of 15 to 28% – total enrolled – as to be recorded in our original MOOC format. This is to be observed for small groups (50–100 learners) as SPOC but also for large groups (more than 2500 learners), as a Massive and Multimodal Private Online Course (“2M-POC”). Today a MOOC is not a simple assembly of videos, text, discussions forums and validation exercises but a complete multimodal learning path including social learning, personal followup, synchronous and asynchronous modules. We conclude that the original MOOC format is not at all suitable to propose efficient training to companies, and we must re-engineer the learning path to have a SPOC hybrid and multimodal training compatible with a cost-effective business model.
This work explores the use of different generative AI tools in the design of MOOC courses. Authors in this experience employed a variety of AI-based tools, including natural language processing tools (e.g. Chat-GPT), and multimedia content authoring tools (e.g. DALLE-2, Midjourney, Tome.ai) to assist in the course design process. The aim was to address the unique challenges of MOOC course design, which includes to create engaging and effective content, to design interactive learning activities, and to assess student learning outcomes. The authors identified positive results with the incorporation of AI-based tools, which significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of MOOC course design. The tools proved particularly effective in analyzing and categorizing course content, identifying key learning objectives, and designing interactive learning activities that engaged students and facilitated learning. Moreover, the use of AI-based tools, streamlined the course design process, significantly reducing the time required to design and prepare the courses. In conclusion, the integration of generative AI tools into the MOOC course design process holds great potential for improving the quality and efficiency of these courses. Researchers and course designers should consider the advantages of incorporating generative AI tools into their design process to enhance their course offerings and facilitate student learning outcomes while also reducing the time and effort required for course development.
xMOOCs
(2023)
The World Health Organization designed OpenWHO.org to provide an inclusive and accessible online environment to equip learners across the globe with critical up-to-date information and to be able to effectively protect themselves in health emergencies. The platform thus focuses on the eXtended Massive Open Online Course (xMOOC) modality – contentfocused and expert-driven, one-to-many modelled, and self-paced for scalable learning. In this paper, we describe how OpenWHO utilized xMOOCs to reach mass audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; the paper specifically examines the accessibility, language inclusivity and adaptability of hosted xMOOCs. As of February 2023, OpenWHO had 7.5 million enrolments across 200 xMOOCs on health emergency, epidemic, pandemic and other public health topics available across 65 languages, including 46 courses targeted for the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest that the xMOOC modality allowed OpenWHO to expand learning during the pandemic to previously underrepresented groups, including women, participants ages 70 and older, and learners younger than age 20. The OpenWHO use case shows that xMOOCs should be considered when there is a need for massive knowledge transfer in health emergency situations, yet the approach should be context-specific according to the type of health emergency, targeted population and region. Our evidence also supports previous calls to put intervention elements that contribute to removing barriers to access at the core of learning and health information dissemination. Equity must be the fundamental principle and organizing criteria for public health work.
With the growing number of online learning resources, it becomes increasingly difficult and overwhelming to keep track of the latest developments and to find orientation in the plethora of offers. AI-driven services to recommend standalone learning resources or even complete learning paths are discussed as a possible solution for this challenge. To function properly, such services require a well-defined set of metadata provided by the learning resource. During the last few years, the so-called MOOChub metadata format has been established as a de-facto standard by a group of MOOC providers in German-speaking countries. This format, which is based on schema.org, already delivers a quite comprehensive set of metadata. So far, this set has been sufficient to list, display, sort, filter, and search for courses on several MOOC and open educational resources (OER) aggregators. AI recommendation services and further automated integration, beyond a plain listing, have special requirements, however. To optimize the format for proper support of such systems, several extensions and modifications have to be applied. We herein report on a set of suggested changes to prepare the format for this task.
“How can a course structure be redesigned based on empirical data to enhance the learning effectiveness through a student-centered approach using objective criteria?”, was the research question we asked. “Digital Twins for Virtual Commissioning of Production Machines” is a course using several innovative concepts including an in-depth practical part with online experiments, called virtual labs. The teaching-learning concept is continuously evaluated. Card Sorting is a popular method for designing information architectures (IA), “a practice of effectively organizing, structuring, and labeling the content of a website or application into a structuref that enables efficient navigation” [11]. In the presented higher education context, a so-called hybrid card sort was used, in which each participants had to sort 70 cards into seven predefined categories or create new categories themselves. Twelve out of 28 students voluntarily participated in the process and short interviews were conducted after the activity. The analysis of the category mapping creates a quantitative measure of the (dis-)similarity of the keywords in specific categories using hierarchical clustering (HCA). The learning designer could then interpret the results to make decisions about the number, labeling and order of sections in the course.
This paper presents a new design for MOOCs for professional development of skills needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals – the CoMOOC or Co-designed Massive Open Online Collaboration. The CoMOOC model is based on co-design with multiple stakeholders including end-users within the professional communities the CoMOOC aims to reach. This paper shows how the CoMOOC model could help the tertiary sector deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) – including but not limited to SDG 4 Education – by providing a more effective vehicle for professional development at a scale that the UNSDGs require. Interviews with professionals using MOOCs, and design-based research with professionals have informed the development of the Co-MOOC model. This research shows that open, online, collaborative learning experiences are highly effective for building professional community knowledge. Moreover, this research shows that the collaborative learning design at the heart of the CoMOOC model is feasible cross-platform Research with teachers working in crisis contexts in Lebanon, many of whom were refugees, will be presented to show how this form of large scale, co-designed, online learning can support professionals, even in the most challenging contexts, such as mass displacement, where expertise is urgently required.
“Financial Analysis” is an online course designed for professionals consisting of three MOOCs, offering a professionally and institutionally recognized certificate in finance. The course is open but not free of charge and attracts mostly professionals from the banking industry. The primary objective of this study is to identify indicators that can predict learners at high risk of failure. To achieve this, we analyzed data from a previous course that had 875 enrolled learners and involve in the course during Fall 2021. We utilized correspondence analysis to examine demographic and behavioral variables.
The initial results indicate that demographic factors have a minor impact on the risk of failure in comparison to learners’ behaviors on the course platform. Two primary profiles were identified: (1) successful learners who utilized all the documents offered and spent between one to two hours per week, and (2) unsuccessful learners who used less than half of the proposed documents and spent less than one hour per week. Between these groups, at-risk students were identified as those who used more than half of the proposed documents and spent more than two hours per week. The goal is to identify those in group 1 who may be at risk of failing and those in group 2 who may succeed in the current MOOC, and to implement strategies to assist all learners in achieving success.
Challenges and proposals for introducing digital certificates in higher education infrastructures
(2023)
Questions about the recognition of MOOCs within and outside higher education were already being raised in the early 2010s. Today, recognition decisions are still made more or less on a case-by-case basis. However, digital certification approaches are now emerging that could automate recognition processes. The technical development of the required machinereadable documents and infrastructures is already well advanced in some cases. The DigiCerts consortium has developed a solution based on a collective blockchain. There are ongoing and open discussions regarding the particular technology, but the institutional implementation of digital certificates raises further questions. A number of workshops have been held at the Institute for Interactive Systems at Technische Hochschule Lübeck, which have identified the need for new responsibilities for issuing certificates. It has also become clear that all members of higher education institutions need to develop skills in the use of digital certificates.
Desperados at Sea
(2023)
Pirates are fortune-seeking fighters at sea. Their exploits fire the imaginations of their victims and admirers, drawing a veil over individuals who rarely bear a real name and pursue their adventurous occupations as buccaneers, filibusters, freebooters, privateers, pirates, or corsairs. Piracy, corsairing, and contraband trade were epidemic among the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Vikings, the Spaniards and the Ottomans, the Muslims, and the Christians. And the Jews.
“Israel am Meere”
(2023)
For Jews in Germany, the period following the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 was a period of decision-making on many levels: How should they respond to the persecution? If they decided to emigrate, many more decisions had to be made: How does one leave a country, and where should one go? A key moment in the process and in the cultural practice of emigration is the beginning of the sea voyage – when the need for departure and the hope for a new arrival jointly create a period of liminality. Looking at reports from sea voyages of exploration and emigration from the 1930s, this contribution discusses the question whether, and in what ways, such reflections can be read in the context of religious experiences and in the search for Jewish identities in times of turmoil.
“Creating a Maritime Future”
(2023)
This article explores the importance of the port city of Hamburg in the evolving discourses on the creation of a maritime future, a vision which became influential in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. While some Jewish representatives in the city aimed at preserving and intertwining Hanseatic and Jewish traditions in order to secure a Jewish presence in the port city under the pressure of the Nazi regime and thereafter, others wanted to create new emigration opportunities, especially to Mandatory Palestine, and create a Jewish maritime future in Eretz Israel. Different Zionist organizations supported the newly evolving maritime ideas, such as the “conquest of the sea”, and promoted the image of a Jewish seafaring nation. Despite the difficulties in the 1940s, these concepts gained influence post-1945 and led to the foundation of the fishery kibbutz “Zerubavel” in Blankenese/Hamburg. However, the idea of a Hanseatic Jewish future also remained influential and illustrates how differently a “Jewish maritime future” was imagined and used to link past, present and future.
Jacob Brandon Maduro’s Memoirs and Related Observations (Havana, 1953) speak to the lasting yet malleable legacy of Jewish Caribbean/Atlantic mercantile communities that defined early modern settlement in the Americas. A close reading of the Memoirs, alongside relevant archival records and community narratives, lends new perspectives to scholarship on Port Jewries and the Atlantic Diaspora. Specifically concerned with Jacob’s adoption of such leading intellectual and political tropes as the Monroe doctrine, José Martí’s Nuestra America, and a Zionism that evolved from an ideology to a reality, the Memoirs reveal a narrative at once defined by the tremendous upheavals of the first half of the 20th century, and an enduring sense of Jewish diasporic peoplehood defined through a Port Jew paradigm whereby the preservation of Jewish ethnicity is understood as synonymous with the championing of modernity.
Under Brazil's ex-president Bolsonaro, deforestation of the Amazon increased dramatically. An Austrian NGO filed a complaint to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Bolsonaro in October 2021, accusing him of crimes against humanity against the backdrop of his involvement in environmental destruction. This paper deals with the question of whether this initi-ative constitutes a promising means of juridification to mitigate conflicts revolving around mass deforestation in Brazil. It thematizes attempts to juridify environmental destruction in international criminal law and examines the Climate Fund Case at the Brazilian Supreme Court. Finally, emerging problems and arguments in favour of starting preliminary examinations at the ICC against Bolsonaro are illuminated. This paper provides arguments as to why the initiative might be a promising undertaking, even though it is unlikely that Bolsonaro will be arrested.
The study explores differences between three user types in the top tweets about the 2015 “refugee crisis” in Germany and presents the results of a quantitative content analysis. All tweets with the keyword “Flüchtlinge” posted for a monthlong period following September 13, 2015, the day Germany decided to implement border controls, were collected (N = 763,752). The top 2,495 tweets according to number of retweets were selected for analysis. Differences between news media, public and private actor tweets in topics, tweet characteristics such as tone and opinion expression, links, and specific sentiments toward refugees were analyzed. We found strong differences between the tweets. Public actor tweets were the main source of positive sentiment toward refugees and the main information source on refugee support. News media tweets mostly reflected traditional journalistic norms of impartiality and objectivity, whereas private actor tweets were more diverse in sentiments toward refugees.
Open edX is an incredible platform to deliver MOOCs and SPOCs, designed to be robust and support hundreds of thousands of students at the same time. Nevertheless, it lacks a lot of the fine-grained functionality needed to handle students individually in an on-campus course. This short session will present the ongoing project undertaken by the 6 public universities of the Region of Madrid plus the Universitat Politècnica de València, in the framework of a national initiative called UniDigital, funded by the Ministry of Universities of Spain within the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia of the European Union. This project, led by three of these Spanish universities (UC3M, UPV, UAM), is investing more than half a million euros with the purpose of bringing the Open edX platform closer to the functionalities required for an LMS to support on-campus teaching. The aim of the project is to coordinate what is going to be developed with the Open edX development community, so these developments are incorporated into the core of the Open edX platform in its next releases. Features like a complete redesign of platform analytics to make them real-time, the creation of dashboards based on these analytics, the integration of a system for customized automatic feedback, improvement of exams and tasks and the extension of grading capabilities, improvements in the graphical interfaces for both students and teachers, the extension of the emailing capabilities, redesign of the file management system, integration of H5P content, the integration of a tool to create mind maps, the creation of a system to detect students at risk, or the integration of an advanced voice assistant and a gamification mobile app, among others, are part of the functionalities to be developed. The idea is to transform a first-class MOOC platform into the next on-campus LMS.
Off-road adventures
(2024)
This article focuses on the visual qualities of Alexander von Humboldt’s statistical tables in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1825–1827) with special attention to how such composites of numbers, alphabetical script, and semiotic elements relate to narrative writing. I argue that Humboldt’s tables/tableaus open up spaces inside his narrative that fragment the reading process, inviting new conversations, connections, and ideas.