Massive Open Online Courses

Dear Colleagues,

The speed of digitization is constantly challenging and affecting the ways we live, learn, work, and relate to each other. More people are connected to the Internet than ever before, using digital devices and services for work, and for all aspects of their life, also for learning. In part this has been fueled by the rise of mobile broadband, which every day ensures the participation of more peoples around the globe, in the digital economy. New technologies have also proliferated over the past decade—some even more recently—artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, cloud computing, Internet of Things, machine learning, mobile applications, nanotechnology, and 3D printing among others. These will drive profound change in our daily lives over the coming decade, radically altering how we consume, produce, learn, and work. And as with all transformational changes, they present us with great opportunity, and significant challenges too. These challenges require new skills and competencies which again has led to an increasing focus on and demand for lifelong learning by society. While digitization throws up new challenges, it is also the solution to address these. Through enabling accessibility and flexible delivery of new competency training, lifelong learning can be made available to all.

Because of this transformation, all global organizations, such as UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning, OECD, the European Commission, and others around the globe, call for opening up education in all means:

…turn international policy statements into actions to ensure equity, access, and quality which encourages countries to provide inclusive, equitable, quality education and life-long learning opportunities for all. In particular, this is to respond to the scale and urgency of need for higher education in the period 2015 to 2030 due to the expected massive growth of students.

Education transforms lives and is at the heart of UNESCO’s mission to build peace, eradicate poverty and drive sustainable development. UNESCO believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality. UNESCO leads the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4. The roadmap to achieve this is the Education 2030 Framework for Action (FFA).

Global actions aim to encourage, facilitate, and embrace the power of online, open and flexible Higher Education for the future we want for a sustainable global development, and to allow education for all, at any time, from anywhere, by any person, at any time and on any device. Thus, we have to concentrate, what is on the horizon related to the entire concept of opening up education. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) provides offers and resources as never before. New business models are seen, not just branding and common goods, but also, for example, MOOCs are used both for lifelong learning, nano degrees, and degrees, but also as continuing professional development (CPD), and not least of all, to meet the enormous higher education updates for refugees. MOOCs have also highlighted pedagogical questions for open online learning, as we can not educate today’s students with methods from the past century, for a future we do not know anything about. There are huge needs for innovations and entrepreneurship to meet demands in the global society today, and tomorrow. Opening up education requires also that we go beyond MOOCs and OERs (Open Educational Resources) and also to find new opportunities for learning, especially for personal learning, just for me and just in time learning.

We very much welcome your contribution of your research and/or policy statements.

Education Sciences is an open access journal, so we are welcoming articles continuously.

We will especially address some burning themes:

• MOOCs to reach the SDG4 goals
• Open online learning beyond MOOCs
• Innovation in global open online learning
• New pedagogy and learning engagement
• MOOCs, and innovative learning spaces
• Can MOOCs address the need to “skill” the population around the globe for the 21st century?
• The next generation of learners, teachers, managers, administrators
• Opening up learning to ensure equity, access, and quality
• Credentialization and recognition of MOOC-based learning
• Stakeholders for MOOCs
• Business models for MOOCs
• Learners success stories
• If MOOCs are the answers, what are the questions?
• Learning analytics, what can we learn from the MOOCs
• Pedagogical and student-centered learning, what can we learn from the MOOCs

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson
Collection Editor

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