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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