EMOOCs 2017 Summary (by Alberto Álvarez Polegre)

During the last week, the EMOOCs 2017 Conference took place at University Carlos III de Madrid. Here’s a summary of my experience as a volunteer and some thoughts about it.

Not my first time with MOOCs
The EMOOCs Conference wasn’t my first experience with MOOCs to begin with. A few months after I obtained my master degree – back in May 2015 –, I was looking forward to increase my knowledge in fields related to my discipline. The thing is that most of the courses I found interesting were quite expensive and I couldn’t afford them. I cannot recall exactly how, but when I was about to give up I found a free course on Internet of Things technologies in a new online platform called FutureLearn. The rest is history. Up to date, I’ve completed several courses on FutureLearn, and a few of them on Coursera and edX.

Dealing with a huge Congress
Back when I was an undergraduate, I organized some small events with other students such as technological courses, engineer competitions and soft skills training, but nothing compare to the EMOOCs Conference. Having more than 350 people attending to different sessions and workshops is quite a big deal – not to mention the OPENedX Conference we were having in parallel which needed support. Luckily, coordination between organizers, volunteers and University staff was good enough. In the end, we manage to solve every problem we faced and make everything right. A part from organization, I felt very lucky for being able to listen to the speeches from the CEOs from Coursera, edX and FutureLearn.

Working with other PhD Students
There were 16 PhD students from several disciplines serving as volunteers (including myself). Coordination between us was just great and everyone did the job. But the thing I want to point out isn’t just our coordination, but how interesting is to mix different people from different PhD programs. In our free time during the Congress, we share our thoughts and experiences in our research fields. Which is the connection between Physics and Law? Maybe there’s no connection at all, however mixing two different topics of research results on a kind of feedback system quite productive – it modulates the way we think.

The Research
I was responsible of coordinating the research sessions, so I had the opportunity to see the presentations of some research papers. To be honest I didn’t know there was some much investigations related to MOOCs and the future of education. How to face and predict dropouts in MOOCs? How to design new techniques for online education? How to address the learners needs? These are some of the questions that were given an answer. Not quite related to my discipline though – interesting nevertheless.

Future of MOOCs
The one million dollars question. How MOOCs will change the future of higher education? For sure they will somehow, but it’s hard to say where the limit is. Will MOOCs be the substitution of traditional Bachelor and Master Degrees from University? I personally don’t think so. I tend to think that MOOCs will be a perfect complement to those willing to continue learning even though they already have a job – online, straightforward, for free (unless you want the certificate). In addition, MOOCs will be a great opportunity for those third world countries where education is not at hand.

Workshop 6: Speaking on Camera (by Laura Penn)
As volunteers we were given the opportunity to participate in one of the nine different workshops. I chose the Speaking on Camera Workshop taught by Laura Penn. I just wanted to improve my presentations skills – with or without a camera in front of me. The experience couldn’t be better. We learn about four different pillars: appearance (physical, standing), voice (its rate, tone and volume), body language (the position, expression with the face, eyes, movement of our hands) and the camera connection. Laure Penn was just awesome and even though she was a native English speaker, it was quite easy to understand her. All in all, a much better experience than I could possibly thought.

Final Thoughts
To sum up, the EMOOCs Conference was a very successful experience. Just like I said before, I don’t think MOOCs will replace traditional education for the time being, however they’ll be a key platform in future education for sure.

A part from the Conference itself, the interaction between different PhD students was, at the very least, interesting. Maybe we could come up with something new from now on. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

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