Mike Sharples, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University’s Institute for Educational Technology (UK), talked to us about the challenges posed by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Mike Sharples is also the Academic Lead for FutureLearn, the first free, open, online platform for courses from multiple UK universities and other leading organisations. In this podcast interview with eLearningEuropa.info he talks about the challenges posed by MOOCs and how they may change the educational landscape.
“The educational landscape is very resistant to change. Universities have been around since mediaeval times, and it’s very difficult to change them”, says professor Sharples. However, he does believe MOOCs are going to bring a “radical change” to universities, due in fact to the increasing demand of new education opportunities in developing countries. “I think there is a huge opportunity there for MOOCs, not to replace universities, but to supplement them”, he says.
“Incredibly excited” with the “huge challenge and huge opportunity” he is currently facing leading the development of the highly-anticipated FutureLearn platform, something he says he has been waiting for his whole career as an expert in online education, Sharples points out that one of the main challenges of this endeavour is to make social learning massive”.
The key to make MOOCs “more human-friendly, more accessible and valuable for learning” is linking collaboration and conversation into content, bringing together “the best of online gaming techniques, online new media techniques and online learning techniques”. Website: FutureLearn. Read more...

A new free micro Open Online Course (mOOC) on Open Content Licensing for Educators (OCL4Ed) will be held on 4-18 September 2013, facilitated by the UNESCO OER Chair Network in collaboration with the OER Foundation and the Commonwealth of Learning.
OCL4Ed is a free online workshop designed for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses. Participants from more than 100 countries have already benefited from previous OCL4Ed mOOCs.
The course materials have been originally developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from UNESCO.

French leading telecommunications operator Orange is developing a platform to unite universities and graduate schools in a francophone Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform that will be launched by the end of this year.
In a recent interview at L’Etudiant Thierry Curiale, Digital Education and MOOC Marketing Director at Orange, revealed his company’s plan to launch a francophone MOOC platform to address the growing need of lifelong learning tools in order allow citizens of all ages to acquire new skills and knowledge. More information.

EMOOCs 2014, the Second MOOC European Stakeholders Summit, will be held on February 10-12, 2014 in Lausanne (Switzerland). Organised by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and P.A.U. Education, the event aims to be an opportunity to gather European actors involved in the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) phenomenon, from policy makers to practitioners and researchers.
The call for papers for both the Experience and Research tracks is now open until September 20, 2013.
Check out the EMOOCs conference website for more details on the subtopics and guidelines for submissions. Read more...

The International Council for Open Research and Education (ICORE) was successfully launched on May 16, 2013 in Rome (Italy) during the Learning Innovations and Technology (LINQ) conference.
Over 40 participants from more than a dozen countries gathered in Rome to provide their professional experience, elaborating on the ICORE mission. Their diverse backgrounds, including computer science, information management, language learning, literature, physics, and quality management, brought a constructive and varied input to the meeting.
Prominent experts in the fields of open education and technology-enhanced learning were present to contribute to the formation of ICORE’s objectives and structure. ICORE website. Read more...