A Francophone MOOCs platform will be launched by the end of the year

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. According to Curiale, MOOCs big players like Coursera or edX, based in the United States, “have not yet invested in the Francophonie, even though there will be 700 million French-speakers in 2050, mainly because of the population explosion in Africa.” With the creation of a platform dedicated to promote MOOCs in French, especially in Africa, Orange aims to contribute to the widespread adoption of ITC in education. Several first-class publishers, universities and higher education institutions based in France and Africa have been approached to take part in this project and offer the first MOOCs of the platform, due to see the public light in the fourth quarter of 2013. The target of the project are French-speaking learners, but Curiale points out that they are not excluding the possibility of integrating MOOCs in English or any other language in the platform. More information.