Emoocs 2023

From June 14 to June 16, 2023, Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, hosted the eighth European MOOC Stakeholder Summit (EMOOCs 2023). The pandemic is fortunately over. It has once again shown how important digital education is. How well-prepared a country was could be seen in our schools, universities, and companies. In different countries, the problems manifested themselves differently. The measures and approaches to solving the problems varied accordingly. Digital education, whether micro-credentials, MOOCs, blended learning formats, or other e-learning tools, received a major boost. EMOOCs 2023 focusses on the effects of this emergency situation. How has it affected the development and delivery of MOOCs and other e-learning offerings all over Europe? Which projects can serve as models for successful digital learning and teaching? Which roles can MOOCs and micro-credentials bear in the current business transformation? Is there a backlash to the routine we knew from pre-Corona times? Or have many things become firmly established in the meantime, e.g. remote work, hybrid conferences, etc.? Furthermore, EMOOCs 2023 has a closer look at the development and formalization of digital learning. Micro-credentials are just the starting point. Further steps in this direction would be complete online study programs or full online universities. Another main topic is the networking of learning offers and the standardization of formats and metadata. Examples of fruitful cooperations are the MOOChub, the European MOOC Consortium, and the Common Micro-Credential Framework. The learnings, derived from practical experience and research, are explored in EMOOCs 2023 in four tracks and additional workshops, covering various aspects of this field. In this publication, we present papers from the conference’s Research & Experience Track, the Business Track and the International Track.

The Quarterly Review of Distance Education is a rigorously refereed journal publishing articles, research briefs, reviews, and editorials dealing with the theories, research, and practices of distance education. The Quarterly Review publishes articles that utilize various methodologies that permit generalizable results which help guide the practice of the field of distance education in the public and private sectors. The Quarterly Review publishes full- length manuscripts as well as research briefs, editorials, reviews of programs and scholarly works, and columns. The Quarterly Review defines distance education as institutionally- based formal education in which the learning group is separated and interactive technologies are used to unite the learning group.

On the occasion of the 10th openHPI anniversary, this technical report provides information about the HPI MOOC platform, including its core features, technology, and architecture. In an introduction, the platform family with all partner platforms is presented; these now amount to nine platforms, including openHPI. This section introduces openHPI as an advisor and research partner in various projects. In the second chapter, the functionalities and common course formats of the platform are presented. The functionalities are divided into learner and admin features. The learner features section provides detailed information about performance records, courses, and the learning materials of which a course is composed: videos, texts, and quizzes. In addition, the learning materials can be enriched by adding external exercise tools that communicate with the HPI MOOC platform via the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard. Furthermore, the concept of peer assessments completed the possible learning materials. The section then proceeds with further information on the discussion forum, a fundamental concept of MOOCs compared to traditional e-learning offers. The section is concluded with a description of the quiz recap, learning objectives, mobile applications, gameful learning, and the help desk. The next part of this chapter deals with the admin features. The described functionality is restricted to describing the news and announcements, dashboards and statistics, reporting capabilities, research options with A/B testing, the course feed, and the TransPipe tool to support the process of creating automated or manual subtitles. The platform supports a large variety of additional features, but a detailed description of these features goes beyond the scope of this report. The chapter then elaborates on common course formats and openHPI teaching activities at the HPI. The chapter concludes with some best practices for course design and delivery. The third chapter provides insights into the technology and architecture behind openHPI. A special characteristic of the openHPI project is the conscious decision to operate the complete application from bare metal to platform development. Hence, the chapter starts with a section about the openHPI Cloud, including detailed information about the data center and devices, the used cloud software OpenStack and Ceph, as well as the openHPI Cloud Service provided for the HPI. Afterward, a section on the application technology stack and development tooling describes the application infrastructure components, the used automation, the deployment pipeline, and the tools used for monitoring and alerting. The chapter is concluded with detailed information about the technology stack and concrete platform implementation details. The section describes the service-oriented Ruby on Rails application, inter-service communication, and public APIs. It also provides more information on the design system and components used in the application. The section concludes with a discussion of the original microservice architecture, where we share our insights and reasoning for migrating back to a monolithic application. The last chapter provides a summary and an outlook on the future of digital education.

The surge in enrollment for online courses is continually increasing. However, beneath the convenience lies a challenge that demands a resolution. Educators, administrators, and instructional designers must ensure that the human element is not lost in the virtual corridors of learning. Students with diverse backgrounds and learning needs require more than a simple virtual classroom. Research reveals a concerning trend: high attrition rates in online courses, often attributed to a lack of engagement and insufficient human interaction. To reverse this trend, deliberate measures must be taken to humanize the online learning environment. This book provides several solutions, offering an array of tools and strategies to promote engagement and infuse the human touch into online spaces. To confront this multi-layered challenge, it becomes paramount to undertake deliberate measures aimed at humanizing the online learning environment. Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education steps forward as a guide, offering an extensive array of tools and strategies meticulously crafted to foster student engagement and infuse the essential human touch into the digital educational landscape.

Modern information and communication technologies make it easier for individuals to be involved in their own health and social care. They also facilitate contact between individuals and service providers and deliver more efficient tools for healthcare staff. Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to bring even more benefits in the future, with more effectiveness and the provision of decision support. This book presents the proceedings of the 33rd Medical Informatics Europe Conference, MIE2023, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 22 to 25 May 2023. The theme of MIE2023 was ‘Caring is Sharing – Exploiting Value in Data for Health and Innovation’, stressing the increasing importance of sharing digital-health data and the related challenges. The sharing of health data is developing rapidly, both in Europe and beyond, so the focus of the conference was on the enabling of trustworthy sharing of data to improve health. Topics covered include healthcare, community care, self-care, public health, and the innovation and development of future-proof digital-health solutions, and the almost 300 papers divided into 10 chapters also cover important advances in the sub domains of biomedical informatics: decision support systems, clinical information systems, clinical research informatics, knowledge management and representation, consumer health informatics, natural language processing, public health informatics, privacy, ethical and societal aspects among them. Describing innovative approaches to the collection, organization, analysis, and data-sharing related to health and wellbeing, the book contributes to the expertise required to take medical informatics to the next level, and will be of interest to all those working in the field.

With today’s current problems, including forced migrations, inadequate education and healthcare systems, environmental threats, economic crises, poverty, etc., it has become evident that systemic social change is needed. Unfortunately, creating, maintaining, and fostering sustainable social value is not easy. In this respect, social entrepreneurs can act as change agents with their social missions. Yet, the role of social entrepreneurship in creating sustainable social value is still in an embryonic state. Creating Social Value Through Social Entrepreneurship contains expert research that links social entrepreneurship and social value in order to further understand the role of social entrepreneurship in creating social value and to highlight the importance of social entrepreneurs in emerging economies. While covering topics that include crowdfunding, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship ecosystems, and the triggers and challenges of social entrepreneurship, this book seeks to extend the social entrepreneurship contribution to social impact. The book is of value to entrepreneurs, managers, academicians, researchers, and students in various fields that include economics, management, and entrepreneurship.