MOOCs and the Participatory Challenge

This book reports on a rather unique European experience, the pioneering ECO project for Social MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and recapitulates the whole three-year process. It provides a critical perspective on the future of MOOCs in Europe and provides several comparisons with other existing models and platforms. The book contains chapters that address the major issues connected to MOOC design and implementation. The first 8 chapters cover large issues that extend beyond the ECO project experience, such as creative industries and trans-literacy; management and implementation; learning environments and platforms; dissemination; pedagogical models; interactivity and agility; gamification; evaluation; and business models. The last 3 chapters hone in on narrowly focused topics such as mobility, knowledge transfer and peer to peer evaluation. The specificities of this on-going project (funded by the EU) are: a unique collaborative pedagogy, an intercultural process (6 languages), and focus on intercreativity, the multiplying impact of e-teachers (the community of participants that was empowered to create more than 50 new MOOCs), accessibility and gamification. The book will be of interest due to its holistic approach to MOOCs and its assessment of their opportunities and their limitations. Many issues are explored and contribute to deeper understanding of the phenomenon and its transformative capacities for education and learning.