EMOOCS 2017 (by Víctor Sánchez del Olmo).

Having participated in this Congress, EMOOCs 2017, apart from has been a great experience has helped me to understand MOOCs from another perspective. Until now I had only seen them as an only one direction educational resource from different Universities to me as a learner but, thanks to the Congress, from now on I will see them as a double via: as a learner but also as a resource in which all of us can participate in order to transmit knowledge to other learners; in other words: stop being only the receiver but also being the creator.

I have also realized the amount of work involved in preparing and conducting a MOOC. I do not want even imagine those MOOC which have a extremely large number of learners. For sure, that is a challenge for creators. I cannot guess how much work there is behind these courses: videos, materials, quizzes, proctoring, etc,…

In this sense, the Workshop I attended, Speaking on camera, has also been very useful and inspirational. It was an authentic luxury Workshop in which we were given essential notions about performance, how to speak, how to pause, how to act and how to introduce ourselves to a MOOC. Simply wonderful. I was conscious that there are many things to take care about ourselves when you want to design a MOOC.

Moreover, this Congress made me think about how this new educative system can develop itself and also how MOOC can collaborate with the traditional and conventional educational presence system we already have and know nowadays at universities.

During these days, we have been discussing about many things: the certifications, the requirements, the rate of dropping out from these courses by learners. Every songle point was deeply analysed. Among other conclusions I would mention the fact that many learners are interested only in a few points, some lessons or some weeks. This point should make us think about modelling some courses in order to obtain a certificate or fewer numbers of credits if learners complete some points contained within courses. An intense analysis of this question is essential in order to find solutions to these challenges.

Concretely, the EMOOCs 2017 made me think about my discipline: Law. Law is a classic discipline and, apart from some fields, Law is very a different subject from one Country to another. These differences could be a big trouble further than the language barriers which is already one of the biggest obstacles in MOOCs. Anyway It supposes to think about proper solutions and find a way to create a MOOC, in which I am really interested.

Last but not least, I discovered a very great people at MOOCs, I really enjoyed with the speakers´ talks, with the organization and with the volunteers: PhD colleagues from all other subjects who I have shared many nice experiences and knowledge with.

My final conclusions from all these days of Congress is that MOOCs and traditional or conventional education (presence at Universities, for instance) should continue to coexist:

·         I want to think that none of each will ever terminally finish the other.

·        We have to see MOOCs as a brilliant education able to provide a very high quality content to a huge number of learners who have particular needs or who wish to control their own

·         Also, at University, in some degrees, MOOCs are the perfect complement for students.