«"There's a tsunami coming" - How MOOCs Disrupt Education and How iversity Wants to Bring the Movement to Europe»

Abstract

During the last 12-18 months the field of online education has been shaken by the dynamics Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have created. The movement does not only affect online learning but the field of education as a whole – or as John Hennessy (President of Stanford University) put it: “There’s a tsunami coming.” The talk will make a short introduction in what way open courses are so disruptive. It will then dive into the practical work of iversity:

• What are the core tools and didactic concepts of an open course?
• How does iversity want to leverage the potential of open courses in Europe?
• First insights into the participation in the contest to identify the best MOOC concepts: https://moocfellowship.org.

Bio

Jonas is the founder and a Managing Director of iversity. He oversees the conceptual development of iversity’s platform and develops iversity’s academic partnerships. He studied Cultural Studies at Humboldt-Universität and Comparative Literature and Theatre Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Jonas conceived the idea of iversity while studying and working as a faculty assistant. It was during that time that he secured iversity’s seed funding from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and the European Union. The iversity platform is beeing used by over 60.000 registered Students and Professors from over 80 Universities. In March 2013 iversity officially announced its goal to bring open courses to Europe, starting with the MOOC Fellowship iversity hosts together with Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.