 My talk is mainly about the European's perspective on MOOCs. What's happening in Europe and why are we different from the US? In what aspect are we different from the US? I don't know all the answers, but there are some data we collected on that. But first, let me introduce you. One moment. To either to you, just on background information, there's a European Association on Online Distancing Universities is already established in 1987. DCU is member of it, like the Open University in the UK, et cetera. This is about the coverage we have in Europe. There's a lacking coverage in Eastern Europe and Sweden, Finland. But we are pretty much a European Coverage Association on Online Distancing Universities. It's mainly open universities, but in many countries there are not open universities like in France. There is a National Association on 37 universities working on online and distance education. So not only distance education in correspondence, but also in online education and MOOCs, et cetera. We have a lot of services for our members, but also services for non-members. I mentioned here three of them. Empowering is in helping and working together with research universities in that transition to online education. So it's not only for members. If we are working together with all kinds of regular universities in the transition to open and online education, we have an excellence that is in quality label on e-learning, online learning, and we have an Open APAD initiative on MOOCs. I won't talk a lot about Open APAD. Here are some slides in your kit for the conference itself. It has a flyer itself. Open APAD is not a platform. There's a lot of talk about MOOCs on platform. Let us use Coursera, et ex, Future Learner, et cetera. This is about a non-profit partnership. So a kind of alliance with a certain branding. And the branding is related to the opening up of education for all. So it's related to removing the barriers for learners. And therefore also quality label, the first one already launched last year, quality label for MOOCs, but it position MOOCs related to an official course, related to that branding of opening up education. One essential part if you're removing barriers is that you not only provide knowledge of out of a higher education system for free in MOOCs, but also provide access by formal exams. So it's not only a MOOC that you can have access to the knowledge of a professor, but you can have also the opportunity to select a certificate of participation, or even only a certificate of completion, but also a real certificate that counts towards a bachelor or master degree. So we are always working on that kind. The quality label is also published in an international journal. It will be on the slides as well, so you can look it up, et cetera. But my main issue is about the domination of the US and the MOOC market, or is it not dominated by the US? If you look at it, it started in Canada, dominated as January already in 2017 by the US, the main MOOC providers are at XCOSERA Udacity. And what's happening in Europe, most of the universities joined the American platforms. So we are handling over our course, our course content to the American platforms. Then already, and then as future learn, for example, started in October 2013, they have become European platforms. But the European platforms are related to language or even country level. So there is no European platform. There's future learn based on the English language. There's media docs based on the Spanish language. There's fun based on OpenNetX. OpenNetX is a French language, diversity mainly German. So diversity in Europe, not one platform. There's perhaps some discussion, Mike already stressed it, Moodle is not suitable as a MOOC platform because it's not scalable to 10,100,000 students. They say they are working on that and Moodle is multilingual. So that might become a platform that can be used in many universities because it supports also multilingual. There's another issue that is an European funded project called Emma and they are also working on a European platform. I'm not that satisfied myself with the platform. They are working on translation services as well. There are some efforts on working on a European platform. And last but not least, you see governmental involvement in the MOOC world in Europe. Fun, Frédéric Université nummerique in France is one example led by the French government and it will be going down to a collaboration of universities in 2015 but still funded by the French government. There's initiative in opening up Slovenia two weeks before it was opening up Romania as a governmental aspect. There's some aspects in Poland as well in Norway and the Netherlands where governmental aspects are important en governmental involvement en funding is there for MOOCs and open education. Then the European Commission has this program opening up education. So it's not open education, opening up education as a verb. And it's about innovating teaching and reshaping, modernizing the European agenda by using open educational resources and other means of open education. And they get a lot of funding of MOOC projects as well. So you see the locals of the MOOC projects now running by funding of the European Commission. I'm coordinating two of them, SCORE 2020 and HOME. I already talked about EMA making a European platform with translation services. ECHO is another large project with more than almost 3 million funding that's making a lot of effort in the social, seamless kind of MOOCs, so the S MOOCs they call it, and making efforts to teachers. So helping teachers to create MOOCs. Then recently there is TRAMOOC. It's just started as a Horizon 2020 more project. Locomotion project is just started and I think that someone will talk about it here as well. Yeah, this afternoon. I missed one that was a fairly early one. Dat is the MOOCs for web talent. There's a flyer on that in your conference aspect. It's not on this slide. And I think that we are now with 11-12 projects that are funded by the European Commission. Again, diversity and hardly any integration. I tried to work to this 11 projects to integrate them. What kind of services are you developing? What will be there after project lifetime to make it more sustainable? To make it coherent. That's a lot of effort. So this is an overview. It's a little bit outdated. For example, Coursera at the top has now more than 1,000 courses. Future Learn, it's there as well. It has more than 46. I think it's now more than 58, I think about kind of courses. But you see it's dominated by Coursera at X. Open Appet has also a lot of courses, but that's not in platform. That's a collection of universities working together and having their own platform. So not outsourcing your courses on a MOOC to another platform, but having your own platform. And the languages that are related to et cetera. If you look at the amount of money going in, in the MOOC world. Then looking at the three American one. Coursera, and perhaps that's more now. I did that analysis almost five months ago. The funding is 58 million dollars. If you look at Udacity, 55. And Udacity is about 48. So there's a lot of money of investors in MOOCs itself. Not that we have a sustainable business model, but there's a lot of investment and a lot of trust by private companies in investing in these kind of platforms, et cetera. In Europe you see a difference kind of thing. Coffermans are investing, European Commission are investing. Not private companies. Coffermans and European Commission. So that's one difference that will come back later on why. If you see for the business model, like for example this Coursera, what did Coursera do? They tried to do headhunting. So providing MOOCs, giving access for companies en looking for the best students and then headhunting them for a job. Didn't work quite well. What did work was about some kind of verified signature track. So that you, as a person, are authenticated and verified as the one who completed the course. And then offering some kind of specialisation and now lately the capstone project. I won't talk about a lot. It seems to work. And perhaps they are now working on employee training and course sponsorship. So sponsorship within the course, et cetera. An estimated revenue is 8 to 10 million in 2014. Look at the number of money invested. It was 88, 85 million. So it's about that. And the university scatters some share of the total revenues. But there is the other side. This was, I think last week, the link is in blue there in the headhatching report. University of California, it doesn't failure about their MOOCs and online education. So there's another one in chronical higher education based on the Babson survey report. And they say in the United States, the MOOC hype is fading. So what's happening? We see on the surface all kind of platforms, all kind of money. But what is beneath the surface? What is there? De struggle, de diversiteit? Is the US indeed leading? What are the reasons to be involved? And what are the difference between the US and Europe? So I already said there are some differences. I will come to that later. To provide some data, there is one survey already done in the United States a lot of times. It's done, it's now latest, it's create level. En they already do that an online survey to online learning and e-learning since 2002. So it's about a long-term survey already. And the latest in 2015 is reporting about the data and the trends in 2014. In Europe, we don't have that kind of data and kind of survey. The AOA started with a survey on e-learning. They did it in the end of 2013 en reported it on last November. And what I did with my project partners in the home project was, and this report as well, it's in the copy on your brochure as well. You can look at it, it's online available. A report on the institutional MOOC strategies in Europe. What I did is take a lot of the questions in those surveys. I repeated that in this survey as well. So one of the results, you see here, the European Union surveys, this research I committed in 2014 and then two previous surveys in the US. So the Babson Group together with other partners in the 2014 and 2013. And you see that there's a lot of difference between the US and Europe. In the US, the number of institutions that has MOOC offerings or is planning to have a MOOC is about 14%. In this survey, that is biased, it's almost more than 70%. It's having a MOOC or planning a MOOC. We said 15% in the United States and 70% in Europe, that has to be in bias. Let's look again. In the US, it has decreased from 14.3% to 13.6%. So a decrease. That was the chronical higher education. Stating Wissencraft, the hype is over. MOOC is failing away, et cetera. In Europe, the AOA did have a study and they said in their study that 85% of their response said they have a MOOC or they are planning to have a MOOC. So that's already a large difference with the US. In the survey we did, it was more than 70%. And if you look at this figure from the European scorecard, it's a well-known website, and you know about it is the OPA Education Europa. They have a European MOOCs card, scoreboard. You see in the top line the number of MOOCs worldwide. En you see in the bottom the number of MOOCs in Europe. The number of MOOCs worldwide is not increasing very much. The number of MOOCs in Europe is increasing even further every month. So we see a lot of new MOOCs coming up in Europe and not in the United States. But there is a bias. In the US, the bias is to large institutions. In de way study, it's bias to those institutions that are in favor for e-learning. And in our study, it's bias to those institutions that are interested in MOOCs. So there is a bias. For example, to illustrate a bias, this is the MOOC scoreboard in Europe. And you see a lot of MOOCs not in Eastern Europe. If you look at the response in our survey, no institutions responded in Eastern Europe. So that again illustrating the bias in our survey, it's mainly those institutions that are interested in MOOCs that are responding. Looking in more detail, these are the survey characteristics of those surveys. The US is a very big one. And the total institutions responded is more than 2,000, 2,800. And the AOA study and our study, they are very low numbers. So that's also about reliability, et cetera. But I like to focus on the institutions answering MOOC questions. So not about trends in Europe more developing MOOCs than in the United States, but focusing on the reasons why MOOCs are important. Then the US, they have about 400 institutions replying on MOOCs. In AOA, in our study, we have about 276 institutions responding. So let's focus not on only the trend, but also the reasons why institutions are involved in MOOC or not. But first, in discussion, in those surveys, they are asking all kinds of questions on MOOCs. But in each survey, MOOCs are not defined. So institutions can decide for themselves, yes, we are offering a MOOC or not. So that's another bias. It's a bias for all the surveys. Because MOOCs are not defined beforehand before the survey itself. So we already know this figure. Every letter in MOOC, massive, open online, and course is negotiable. It's not defined very good. And here is a table of all the abbreviations of all kinds of MOOCs are related to MOOCs. Not only Spokes, yet MOOCs is only a micro course, a sock, a dog, look, more, rock. Now, you can name it. The abbreviations is only increasing. But also making a difference between what's a course and a minor course, what's a small private open course and what's a MOOC course. So they're all marketing efforts. So it's only marketing. En in Europe we try to define a MOOC definition. And this is tried by myself. I did try to work together with all the UOP and MOOC projects to define what's a MOOC and what's not a MOOC. Because if you have a project on a MOOC, a MOOC is not defined, your project is ill-defined as well. So this is a definition. It's also validated in the survey itself. It's a little bit different from the Wikipedia definition. De main aspect is that it's designed for large numbers of participants. So the scalability is there, designed for large numbers. That can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, as long as you have the internet connection. So it's mainly online, almost online. It's open to everyone without entry qualifications. So that doesn't mean there's no prior knowledge, but no entry qualifications, an open door policy. And it offers a full complete course experience online for free. In the latest discussions on the MOOC definition, there are two other definitions we say for free or for a little amount of money. Yeah, then this is all courses you can do. And there are even say, oh, we have some video and we have a community and we let's call it a MOOC. So now it's a full course. A full course means more than open educational resources, like video or PowerPoint. It does has to have feedback mechanism. It has to have tests. It has to have an exam. It has to have a formal certificate and an anti certificate. Not a formal, it can be an informal certificate. So it has to be a full course experience. And that's very essential. Also essential is that it has to be designed for large numbers. What do you mean by large numbers? So it has to be scalable. So I have a discussion with, for example, with my colleagues in Delft. They do a great job on MOOCs. But I have asked them, what happens if your number of participants is increased from 1,000 to 10,000? Does that increase amount of efforts by your institution a lot or not? Is it linear or is it not linear? Is it not relevant how much if 10,100,000? So it's also about scalability. Now then, you can have a lot, have a lot of discussion, what's a MOOC and not what's not a MOOC. You can find in the report also the validation of that definition. So in that report in the survey we also asked a lot of institutions what is your perception of a MOOC. So I'm not giving a definition beforehand, but we asked the institutions replying what is your perception of what's important in a MOOC. And you see that it's designed for a massive audience en this is an essential aspect for those institutions that responded to be in a MOOC. The sustainable model, it doesn't have to be. You can lose money with a MOOC and make money elsewhere. On the left side you see that the MOOCs has to be for free. So the blue one, they find it highly relevant, the yellow find it still relevant for the institution. So don't go in detail for this. What's surprising for me was also the importance of open licensing. So you don't see many MOOCs as an open licensing of content that you can reuse it. Some institutions find that relevant. What I want to say is in this one, there's a difference between definitions on MOOCs. If MOOCs should have a fixed starting days and a fixed base or should be self-paced as well. So can self-paced MOOCs courses be a MOOC or not? We had a lot of disputes with the MOOC scoreboard in Europe where they excluded two years ago all kinds of self-paced courses. Even if they are designed for the massive audience, if they are for free, have a full course, et cetera, they excluded self-paced courses. Lately, Coursera started with self-paced courses. So for me it's not a critical element to decide if it's a MOOC or not a MOOC. It's a MOOC because it's for free, it's scalable, it's a full course experience, it has an overdrive policy, et cetera. That are the criteria and not if it's fixed date or not. And this also, you see that the institutions are not decisive. It can be not, we don't know. And for me it's not essential. It can be self-paced, it cannot. And that isn't different because you see a lot of dropouts this self, this fixed schedule of MOOCs. That can be because it's a fixed schedule. You have to be in the pace of six weeks and have to repeat that. So in self-paced, you have to freedom of your own pace. But that's in disadvantage as well because you don't have to stick behind you to complete it. So it's both sides of the medal. It can be good, it can be bad for both sides. But it's not essential for a MOOC. No, I will skip this one. You can find the definition of the MOOCs but also the, it's in the brochure itself, in the report. You can find the complete criteria, not only the definition but also the criteria when it's a MOOC and not a MOOC. For example, for the massive, we refer to two criteria. The number of participants is larger than 150. That was already stated two years ago by Stephen Downs, I suppose, or was it someone else. But the Bumbas number, so it has to be larger than 150. The most essential, the model, and I say the pedagogical kind of model is designed such that all services do not increase significantly as a number of participants increase. So it's scalable. So that kind of criteria you find in the definition as well related to openness online and on the course level. So most of the European project I talk about, not all, because someone started, are accepting this kind of definition. Going back, let's go to the drivers. Mark, if I'm running out of time, you will never know. So ten minutes before then, yeah, five minutes, okay. Let's go back to the surface, the four surface and focus on the reasons why institutions are involved of are not involved in MOOCs. So I'm not focusing on all the others. It's just the institutions responding to the MOOC questions. And let's focus on the US and Europe differences. For example, this question was exactly repeated in the survey I did as in the US. And it's about credentials for MOOCs completion that cause confusion about high education degrees. If you look, for example, in the United States, we have a certificate of completion, certificate of participation, verified certificates, name it. I think there are only ten names for a kind of certificate. So I agree with a lot of Americans, they say, it will cause confusion. But in Europe, the institutions replied in our survey don't find that. It's not confusion. And we ask also why. And it's related to the European credit transfer system, et cetera. So we know when it is verified within the bachelor degree, et cetera. So we have a system for that. So there's no confusion for the institutions responded in our survey. So that's also a large difference between the US and Europe. Another. MOOCs are important for institutions to learn about online pedagogy. Again, stressing what future learners are saying. In Europe, most institutions find that very highly relevant for their institution. It's about learning of online didactics and pedagogical approach. In the US, there's a decrease of interest. You see in 2013, more than 40% increase. 2014, less than 30%. So there's a decrease in interest in the United States on online didactics and pedagogical approaches. And they find it very interesting and important in Europe. Again, a difference. Another one. Again, the same questions repeated in the US survey and in the Europe survey. MOOCs are sustainable methods for offering courses. You see a decrease in the United States. US 2013, 2014, there's a decrease in increasing that it's a sustainable method. In Europe, most of the institutions do agree that it's a sustainable method to provide MOOCs. Perhaps not that MOOCs are a sustainable business model at itself, but isn't part of offering to society and everything MOOCs. Another one. How well are MOOCs meeting institutions objectives? Because you start with a MOOC and then have the objectives, but there are objectives for that. In the US, a minor do already see some meeting of objectives. In Europe, institutions that responded see that they are meeting some of the objectives of the institutions. Another question, also exactly the same as in the US survey. What are the primary objective for your institution? There's not all the objective, what is the most important objective for your institution? And there you see a lot of agreement. So, like I said, it has an increased institutional visibility. That's important. The most striking difference between the US and Europe is that in the US it's related to drive student recruitment. Like the Trinity College said student recruitment is important. In Europe, we find that it's very important to reach new kinds of students. So not recruitment of more students, but to reach new kinds of students. That's also related to create flexible learning opportunities. We want to have flexible learning opportunities, not only for the on-campus students or more on-campus students, but for new kinds of students. Mind the difference between that, we also have seen the bias that for in Europe, the institutions that are not offering a MOOC yet, the most important interest to be involved in MOOCs is the flexible learning opportunities. You see a large difference between the response of all institutions and the response in the European Union is only those institutions offering a MOOC. So the yellow versus the grey one. What's consistent is that the primary objective to generate income or to reduce the cost or explore cost reductions are not seen important. Not in the United States, not in Europe. Not seen as the primary objective. They are important, but not the primary objective. So this one from the new Vice-Counselor van de Open University, a warning about the loss of part-time students. I see a relation between this one. So MOOCs is not only for present students of on-campus supply, but for new students in a flexible way. So MOOCs, there is a lot of policy efforts here as well. So the funding scheme, et cetera, is feasible for a part-time student, et cetera. But MOOCs can be a solution to continuous professional education and part-time students as well. And that's also why Europe is investing in that and why universities are investing in that. We added some additional questions in our survey, for example, to the relevance of certain objectives for institutions. So we clustered the kind of the objectives. You see already that there are financial reasons to be involved in MOOCs. They are not important on the bottom. Most important is the visibility, the marketing, et cetera. Those are seen as the most important for institutions. But in Europe also the innovation area, so to improve your educational offer, to innovate your educational offer to experiment, et cetera, is seen very important in Europe, as well as the demands for learners and societies. So there's no comparison to the U.S. It's just Europe and this one. So some reflection on what is happening. In Europe institutions are more involved in MOOCs than in the U.S. although there's a bias in my survey. The number of European MOOC institutions is MOOC involvement increasing. The MOOCs are perceived in Europe as a massive offering course in their complete, not as a course level, but in the total offer. And institutions are increasingly developing a positive attitude towards MOOCs and have positive experience. So they are meeting some of their institutional objective, these MOOCs. The most dominant objective is to increase institutional visibility of having MOOCs for reputation issues. But in the U.S. the recruitment is seen as a student recruitment. It's seen as the most important objective. In Europe it's seen as more new students and flexible learning opportunities. Then I want to ask, but why is that? Why is the difference? Why is that? Why are Europe more interested in new kinds of students, flexible learning opportunities in the U.S.? What are the macro drivers? On an institutional or society level that are most important. And perhaps it's difficult to read. We identified about nine or ten different macro drivers that are important at an institutional or even as a society level. And you see at the top that being involved in education as a big business or reducing the cost are not that important as a driver itself. De rest are relative, seen as relative important, all kinds of drivers that are relevant to be involved with MOOCs as an institution. Except, for example, at the last one, the shared services and unbundling. By unbundling I mean is that this MOOCs, all kinds of services are outsourced. Even exams, like we have Pearson exam centers where the exam itself is outsourced, not only the platform, et cetera. So that is about unbundling your services to, not only to your own institution, but to out parties who are offering those services. If you looked at, we asked the same question to the CEOs of the institutions and then asked, what is in your opinion the macro drivers for the government? So the governmental influence, what's there most important? And you see that the need for skills for jobs, the quality aspect and the internationalization, globalization are seen by universities as the main reason why governments should be involved. To summarize this on a macro level, on a macro level the institutions say that is relevant or highly relevant, almost all the drivers except for new methods and big business like education, reducing the cost and unbundling. If you ask the same question on what's the most important for your government, the most important for your government are the need for skills and jobs, improving the quality for learning and the internationalization, globalization aspects. You find also the old kind of description of the macro drivers are in the report as well. So let's reflect on this and the difference between the US and Europe. Why are there those differences? We see the difference that the US dominates the MOOC world both by funding raised, both by the Big Bet platforms and there are differences in the objectives. This is an article in The Economist of two weeks ago and it states that in worldwide there are two kind of systems for higher education, the American system and the European system. In the American system it's based on a mixed private and public funding and it's related to excellence of an institution. In Europe each institution gets more or less the same money from the government. So for example in the Netherlands there are no better universities and most of the universities are even good in the top 100 ranking of the Shanghai index etc. So the global system is divided in the American system based on competition, reputation, mixed funding against the more social dimension in Europe where all university gets more or less the same funding from the government. They analyze it that the American system is not related to education output it's only related to research output is about having high fees how higher the fee how better your reputation and how more etc. So it's about competition, high fees it's not related to education output and they say the American system is worldwide winning. So yeah, that said okay what's on the European system is there a European system or is the diversity between our countries so big that in the UK you have to pay more now for a year for a student? 7000 of 8000 pound, yeah 1 minute, not 5 So that's why we decided to have a conference last year in November in Porto to reflect on the European dimension and we make a Porto declaration the Porto declaration on European books what's important for Europe because we are more involved if you see only for example on the Cossera platform I think that Chef Haywood last from Edinburgh's last he demonstrated that the number of MOOCs on the Cossera platform is now more than 50% is European So in Europe we are dominating the MOOC world both in increasing the objectives are indeed related to social dimension there's a lot of efforts going on but diversity we have a lot of platforms related to one country one language we have a lot of projects not working together so that's essential to have a cohesive and a collaborative effort in Europe the main challenge is how to do that so this is my last slide so last last week I was with the European Commission and I said the strengths of Europe is diversity and they said that's the weakness of Europe diversity because we have a lot of languages try to develop a European platform with all the languages and all the diversity in pedagogical approach as well you cannot do that but the strengths is that diversity is perhaps a slow pass but is a more sustainable pass like this biology or even evolution diversity is to embrace diversity in tackling the problem on the social dimension working together respecting differences and then trying to make step by step further in our efforts on the social dimension in education so therefore I say let's embrace diversity but then let's work hard together to collaborate on the issues that are important thank you the strengths that has been pointed out around the MOOCs in Europe is of course the strength that we have is the ECTS, the European Credit Transversers which is a huge asset that Europe has and just noticed one of the MOOCs I think it's from the EU project and UNED are giving out EU gas certificate for ECTS credits at the end of it so and in light of the ASU announcement it's a very much watch this space you mentioned the portal declaration there as well and the portal of MOOCs conference and there is going to be a special edition on MOOCs of the international review of ultimate distance open and distributed to rename themselves over the role of international good research in open and distributed learning we have a paper coming out on this topic yourself and Marc and other members of the public score project and that article is stressing about the threats and opportunities for Europe in the MOOCs world so that will be published I hope in the next few months it's been edited by Marcus guested by Marcus Diamond and it should be of interest to those as we are active in this research area I don't know if we have time maybe for one quick question while we transition into our debate now because we're going to get some of our speakers back up and some others and have them really trash it out here in a minute maybe a quick question we had some time for a comment or a question for Darko Colin, yeah one of the things that you mentioned was that the spend on higher education is increasingly more avoid and yet across open surveys the communication was not seen was that the teams so there's a difference between the primary objective for institutions so cost might be important because it's about scalability but it's not a primary objective to be involved and there is more on innovation or the social dimension that are more important etc or learning about pedagogical approach your first part of the question was related to the economist article and that was on the bottom is staying yes but that's also the social dimension I think we will talk about in a panel as well you see the increase in spending is mostly not in the US and Europe but outside in Asia and Latin America etc so in the people where the increase for need for higher education is very high and then MOOCs can provide a solution for that can but are not yet so yeah thanks for watching just to say Bapu is here over lunch before he flies back so he's going to be able to take any questions and continue the conversation further and just like to thank you again Bapu and give this slide to him