Leading experts in online learning have announced their attendance at Europe's most important summit in the field of Massive Open Online Courses, the "European MOOC Stakeholder Summit" (EMOOCs 2023). The conference for digital education will take place in Potsdam (Germany) from 14 to 16 June 2023. As the host, the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), announced, the summit agenda also includes conference contributions by renowned international content providers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the course platform edX.
The main focus of the summit will be on analyzing whether the boom in online learning, which was accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, is ongoing or has now dissipated. A further topic of discussion will be how artificial intelligence (AI) can promote digital education and whether, beyond modular partial degrees, so-called micro degrees could also play a role in the online study programs of the future.
"We are, for instance, eagerly awaiting the presentation by my colleague Anant Agarwal, who founded edX in 2012," says Prof. Christoph Meinel. The Potsdam e-learning expert is host of the conference and head of the openHPI e-learning platform. "Together with Coursera, edX is one of the platforms with the most enrollments in open online courses worldwide," Meinel stressed, referring to a study by the analysts of "Research and Markets" from 2022.
Other well-known speakers at the Potsdam conference will be Dr. Jens Brandenburg, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Berlin, and the coordinator of the European MOOC Consortium, George Ubachs. Research topics will be presented by two scientists from Italy and France: Antonella Poce, professor of experimental pedagogy, and computer science professor Catherine Mongenet. International aspects will also be brought into the debate by MIT senior advisor Dr. Vijay Kumar and edX manager Kathy Pugh. Two key topics of the eighth EMOOCs will be the ever-increasing formalization of digital education and the growing importance of networks and cooperation in online courses.
Registration for this important event is now open at the early bird rate until 1 May. The event will bring researchers, political and business leaders, and platform operators together at HPI. The institute is considered one of the leading players in the field of scalable e-learning. With its open learning platform, openHPI.de, HPI has been offering free online courses on IT and innovation topics to the general public since 2012.
Two years ago, HPI hosted the seventh EMOOCs conference. Due to the Corona pandemic, it was held exclusively online—in a "double pack" with the international specialist conference "ACM Learning at Scale" (L@S), which dealt with issues of scalable e-learning.
