My Emoocs 2017 (by Marvin Dertliu)

Participating as a volunteer in EMOOCS 2017 has been an amazing experience. It was for me the first time to get involved as member of the organization staff in a congress of that importance, the more developed by the university I belong. And most importantly it gave me the opportunity to meet some new friends, my fellow volunteers colleagues which as me, are performing their PhD in the UC3M.

Congress focused on Moocs, massive open online courses enabled on web platforms and provided by universities and leading educational institution. Despite its freshness, Moocs have widespread all over the world as a revolutionary learning facility. Through the internet teachers of whatever branch can submit their contents and make knowledge available anywhere, at any time, and mostly free.

The Congress was participated by academics, developers, facilitators and Governments from all over the world. Best international recognized universities and internet companies were involved, and speakers talked about their experience with Moocs, their potential and perspectives.

In words of panelists, Moocs definitely are going to change the current way of teaching, even if not replacing it. Especially upcoming Professors shall take Moocs very seriously. In fact if by one hand Moocs are a very effective way to widespread education, they are also a facilitator of courses to be added in official curricula. 

Some trends are quite evident at the moment: top universities are pushing Moocs in order to lead such new ways of learning also and consolidate their fame; at the same time Moocs potential is being exploited to reach a larger number of users, and some academic courses are mandatory to be taken online. Such implies that young academics shall be ready to manage in depth that technology as a part of their job skills, in addition to their purely academic abilities.

As volunteers of UC3M our duty was to collaborate in different ways. We had to attend visitors, register, check conference rooms to be ready, and provide for all kind of facilities as needed to the speakers in order to ease their job as much as possible. Coordination with team directors and other volunteers was a must at any time and permitted to overcome urgencies or extraordinary needs unpredictable in advance.

Apart from that a precise commitment of the event was to make us part of the congress, as users and not only as staff. In particular we had to take part in Workshops which happened in the last part of the Congress.

The one I chose: “The Art of Disruption”, dealt with the issue of disruption as a means to approach Moocs and the use of disruptive schemes to understand the dynamics of Moocs and investigate their evolution.

We were organized in teams and had to work on specific exercises which were related to creative approach to teaching, hosting, and planification of online courses. But it was not only that. The workshop went further, forcing each of us to think about the future of education, technology and the role of human and artificial intelligence within a 20 years horizon. Me I had to cope with people engaged actively in Moocs as recognized professionals, which shared their impressions with me along the course. The interchange of experiences and human contact was thus the core part of the workshop, and let us, the volunteers, to benefit from an inside view of Moocs and their operative environment.

In my opinion Moocs represent now, and still more in the future, a huge part of the education. Independently if we talk about academic education, long life learning or professional training, the internet targets a demand which is actual and consistent: getting contents of high quality at lower costs, smashing down geographical barriers.

Actually the greatest part of Moocs focuses on specific courses – opened in most cases – the only economic valuable performance raising out from the release of a validate certificate of passing exams. A following step is now being pursued by American universities which use Moocs both, as a pre-selection course to the admittance of undergraduate or LLM students, or as part of academic curricula, validating credits obtained on online subjects, within official programs. It won’t be difficult to think about full on-line undergraduate or postgraduate programs, especially useful, for those who cannot displace abroad in order to receive education of same quality, due to economic costs of stay abroad, visa requirements and other similar barriers.

Nonetheless Moocs cannot do everything. Moocs for example cannot provide for research. It is elementary that Moocs are a means to disclose contents but those contents need to be investigated and set up by researchers who perform their activity within an academic institution, whose costs of attendance are not compensated by Moocs revenues. Another example of what Moocs cannot provide for is empathy, interactions among students. Studies have demonstrated that education, especially academic education, is not restricted only to the passive acceptance of data concepts, but is inherently linked to the experience of learning, which involves a far bigger amount of perceptions, coming out from personal interchange, communication and merging through different cultures. This kind of experience is definitely impossible to achieve through the internet.

The correct way to approach Moocs passes then through an equilibrate understanding of what can be achieved through Moocs and what escapes to the goals and opportunities such technology can provide for.

What I wish to do with this technology will be to consolidate and get recognized as an expert of my field of research worldwide. After the defense of my PhD thesis and its publication, I am willing to wait to get also published some 4 core papers on top rated international reviews, before inaugurating my first online massive open course. If experience leaves to a positive outcome my second step will be to open a full or almost full online LLM degree for target audiences on demanded topics, with an international academic staff and coordinated within the academic department I will belong to.

The success of the initiative, would lead to the third step, consisting in the creation of an international network of students and researchers, taking advantage of all the possibilities offered by the internet, but never setting aside the social dimension of education which was, and always will be, just one, of other much ways, in which persons get in touch with others.