My Experience at EMOOCs 2017

My Experience at EMOOCs 2017 by Eva Espinosa Cano

From the 22nd to the 25th of May, the international EMOOCs 2017 Conference took place at my University (University Carlos III de Madrid). It was the first time the EMOOC conference was hosted by a Spanish university and I was lucky to be part of the organization team as a volunteer. In this post I want to share with you my experience and some opinions about MOOCs that I have built during this week.
The Organization Experience
The EMOOC conference was a great experience at all levels. First of all, I have to thank the organization team for making this experience unforgettable. I thought about being part of the organization of EMOOC 2017 as a challenge that I should face to build my future as a researcher and as a professor and I was not disappointed. I already had experience organizing small sport events but they cannot be compared to such a big research conference. We were responsible for guiding attendants and for making them feel like at home and I think we all did the work and everything went even better than expected. From my point of view, it was a highly enriching experience.

The Volunteers

At the personal level, I met really interesting people. There were other fifteen PhD students from the same university working as volunteers and each of them had different research fields. These research fields were, in most cases, very different from mine giving us the opportunity to learn from each other.

 

The workshop

In workshop 5 "Framing the talking head" (Jeanine Reutemann) I found experts in MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) production and post-production and they help me to get familiar with all challenges I will face in the future when I would prepare or participate in a MOOC. They also gave me ideas on how to solve those problems in such a way that now I feel more confident with the idea of facing a MOOC.

 

How to apply MOOCs in my current work?
However, I think for me it was even more important that the conference open my mind at the professional level. The first day I already had an idea of a MOOC that I should implement in my workplace. I talked to my supervisor and we both found it a great idea. The MOOCs open us a window to the world, it could be for us as researchers a way to let everyone know who we are and what we do. Moreover, we can teach students the basics they need to know to be part of our team, those things that are not taught at the university. For instance, we can teach the basics of cell biology to chemists or the basics of chemistry to a biologist.
What have I learned about MOOCs?
As well as for researchers, I understood that MOOCs are essential in future learning, in companies and in many other aspects. I consider that MOOCs are part of the future of superior education. They will be one of the tools that will make possible an educational revolution that will translate into a new way of teaching at universities. They are also the best way to get people from undeveloped countries closer to superior education and an opportunity for everyone to learn from experts from all over the world. However, I realized that they are not of common knowledge and I feel that I should talk about them at work, but also to my friends and family.
MOOCs in my future
Regarding my future, I do not know if as a professor (if I ever become one) I will be able to use MOOCs or not. Nonetheless, I am sure that, at least, I will have them on mind and I will try to find the way to make them part of my education plan. 

To conclude, I would like to say thanks again to everyone that make this experience possible. I hope we can see each other soon!

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