«Conceptualizing and Implementing MOOCs - Experiences and Lessons learned from OPCO12 and an Outlook on COER13»

Abstract

The New York Times declared 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC”- a development that had neither been foreseen by the Horizon Report 2012, one of the world’s most recommended trend studies for e-Learning, nor by the organizers of the OPen COurse 2012 “Trends in E-Teaching” (OPCO12), one of the first German MOOCs, which took place from April to July 2012 with about 1.450 participants.

Currently Massive Open Online Courses are vividly discussed not only among e-Learning-experts but also in the public, topics ranging from educational designs, technical aspects or business models to the democratization of education.

The presentation will give a short overview over the currently developing German MOOC-landscape to then focus on lessons learned and conclusions from the experiences with OCPO12 from an organizer’s perspective. Design considerations of the course will be related with central results of the course evaluation, especially concerning motivation and networking between the participants. In addition, the presentation will elaborate on the tools chosen and the collaboration between different organizers. Concluding, I will point out, how the experiences with OPCO12 have influenced the planning and implementation of our next MOOC, the COER13 (The Open Course on Open Educational Resources), which will start in April.

Bio

Anne Thillosen studied theology (diploma 1992) along with german language and literature studies (Staatsexamen 1993) at the University of Bonn and at the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem. She achieved her Ph.D. 2008 at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg with a dissertation on changes of scientific literacies by the influence of digital media.

From 1992 to 1996 she worked as scientific coordinator for Bonn University’s Graduate Research Program “Intercultural Religious and Religious Historical Studies”. Since then she has been working in the area of e-Learning: From 1997 to 2005 she worked as a research scientist in several e-Learning-projects, e.g. the Virtual University of Applied Sciences. From 2006 to 2008 she was acting leader of the E-Learning-Center at the Ruhr-University Bochum. In May 2008 she started to work at the Knowledge Media Research Center (KMRC) in Tuebingen as a co-leader in the project e-teaching.org. This project aims to develop an information and qualification platform for e-teachers in institutions of higher education in German speaking countries. She is interested in the development and implementation of media-based learning in higher education focusing on educational design, organisational aspects and quality management.