the eLearning Papers is based on the contributions

This special issue of the eLearning Papers is based on the contributions made to the EMOOCS 2014 conference jointly organized by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and P.A.U. Education. The success of this conference with more than 450 participants demonstrates that MOOCs are at the beginning of a wave and a first step towards opening up education.

Why are MOOCs innovative? They provide alternative ways for students to gain new knowledge according to a given curriculum. MOOCs can also enhance learners’ ability to think creatively to select and adapt a paradigm to solve the problem at hand. These are the main findings of a case study on the Discrete Optimization MOOC on Coursera.

Many higher education institutions are asking their staff to run high quality MOOCs in a race to gain visibility in an education market that is increasingly abundant with choice. Nevertheless, designing and running a MOOC from scratch is not an easy task and requires a high workload. Professors from Universidad Carlos III in Madrid offer a set of recommendations that will be useful to inexperienced professors. An MIT study also gives key findings on optimizing video consumption across courses.