In the past two years, MOOCs have moved into the mainstream of European Higher Education. According to the European MOOC Scoreboard, 675 courses have been offered freely by European universities between March 2015 and February 2016. However, despite this impressive offering, there are few examples within the EHEA of institutions strategically deploying MOOCs to complement their own educational offer. Apart from virtual mobility arrangements among selected universities, partnerships in ICT-supported teaching and consequent recognition of achieved learning outcomes are scarce in European HEIs.The ECs 2013 Communication on Opening up Education states that “In addition to broadening access to education, wider use of new technology and open educational resources can contribute to alleviating costs for educational institutions and for students, especially among disadvantaged groups”. At the moment, this potential of MOOCs is not being fully realised, due to a lack of uniform arrangements for recognition, transferability and portability of credit, as well as due to an immature evaluation framework for assessing the quality and cost-effectiveness of the same MOOCs.In particular, MOOCs have the potential of “Supporting the efforts of EU countries to integrate refugees in Europe's education systems and ensure their skills development is an urgent task in the light of the current migration crisis” (EC, 2016). Refugees face legal, linguistic and financial barriers to enter Higher Education, in addition to the challenges coming from the ‘lost time’ obtaining refugee status, finding accommodation, re-establishing links with family etc. With the help of credit-bearing MOOCs, students would be able to begin introducing themselves to their studies at their own pace, without needing to enroll the institutions, knowing that this credit would be eventually recognised towards their final degree, once they were able to access Higher Education more formally. Alternatively, MOOCs could help refugees top-up specific skills and directly enter the labour market.Thus, the MOONLITE project has been designed to:-Widen and improve the HEIs teaching for registered HEI students (1st mission) -Create new educational pathways for refugees (serving society, 3rd mission) and-Build entrepreneurial and language skills among those two groupsThe MOONLITE consortium is made up of experienced actors in the field, and between them include actors with experience in:-Designing and running MOOCs-Designing solutions for MOOC recognition and assessment-Setting up quality frameworks for MOOCs-Coordinating groups of institutions producing MOOCs-Researching the contribution of MOOCs to language teachingSpecifically, the consortium aims to:-Identify opportunities and barriers in recognizing MOOC-based learning for students and refugees-Create institutional and cross-institutional scenarios to exploit MOOCs for credit-bearing HEI courses & future employability amongst students and refugees-Implement a set of scenarios in partner HEIs and amongst our partnership reaching 175 learners, refugees and registered students-Create a cost-benefit analysis tool, allowing Higher Education Institutions to calculate the impact of MOOC-provision on their triple bottom lines (financial, environmental, social)-Run an open online course targeted at MOOC providers and refugee support groups on how to design and utilize MOOCs for refugees while make learning resources available beyond course duration-Create a vision and recommendations, aimed at European policy makers and institutional leaders, for a more viable and strategic role of MOOCs in European HEIsThe project will help Europe consolidate around a more coherent approach to credentialisation of MOOC-based education. This will in turn lead to an increased flexibilisation of the Higher Education system, by allowing a much greater range of accredited learning opportunities to both enrolled and non-enrolled students. In particular, we believe this will improve the accessibility of Higher Education to marginalised groups, which will be even more pronounced for refugees, as MOOCs offer the ideal bridge for them into Higher Education.
MOONLITE has explored the way in which open education, in the shape of MOOCs, can be used to support the social inclusion of refugees and migrants in terms of their access to higher education and the employment market. Specifically, the general objectives of the MOONLITE project were to boost the use of MOOCs to A) Widen and improve the HEIs teaching for registered HEI students, B) Create new educational pathways for refugees, and C) Build entrepreneurial and language skills among those two groups. The achievements of the project can be divided into two groups, those promised in the proposal as outputs and additional ones included in other sections of the proposal or achieved as the project advanced. Regarding the former, all the projects Outputs were delivered as promised and are available on the project’s website. Regarding the latter, the following details can be provided: 1. More than 100 representatives of refugee stakeholders were contacted by the partners. 2. In total around 4895 people were beneficiaries of the work in this project. This figure comes from the number of refugees and migrants who have participated in the MOOCs developed in the project, the attendees of the webinars, the online and face-to-face workshops and events, etc. 3. Four institutional workshops were run to highlight the issues covered in this project: LNU reached 11 participants in their institutional workshops, UNED 40 in their two workshops, UW reached 10 participants, and ESCP 5. 4. A total of 407 people participated in online vision-building events. These two events took the form of an Oxford style event with 340 people (who participated 6253 times) and a mixed face-to-face and online event with 67 people. 5. A total of 310 people were reached regarding MOOC policy issues. Directly, there were 14 people interviewed, and indirectly, as part of the contacts and discussions held in a range of different meetings and events, there were an additional 296 people. 6. The openly accessible learning resources in the MOOCs in the project MOOCs were accessed more than 5000 times. Regarding the project’s contribution to academic research (information can be found on the project’s website): - 23 presentations were given at national and international conferences. - 10 workshops were run at conferences or relevant events. - 7 journal and book chapter publications have been produced. Other publications are in still in process. Some results exceeded the initial expectations of the partners in the project, especially in bringing together stakeholders, academics, academic staff, NGO’s and refugees from around the world. For example: 1. The project provided an online Oxford-style debate on the topic of how MOOCs can enhance the cross-institutional collaboration and European policies necessary to support refugee HE and employment. 2. Webinars were undertaken that were designed for interactively. Seven webinars drew the attention of approximately 270 participants and the recordings more than 600. 3. The project’s Facebook group, MOOCs 4 Social Inclusion & Employability (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1836694569953327), has proven to be a springboard for exchange of ideas and projects. It has been very active, with 74 different posts by 11 different authors. These posts have been shared 19 times, reacted to 229 times and commented on 13 times. The group currently has increased from 169 to 203 members in the last 4 months and will remain active even now the project has finished. 4. The Spanish project partner organized two very successful face-to-face institutional meetings with nearly 20 participants from NGOs, associations, and refugee support groups. 5. The Spanish partner also developed and ran two Language MOOCs for refugees and displaced people, to help them with their immediate needs in Spain with Spanish. These courses reached 2252 and 1233 people respectively (a total of 3485). The project website (https://moonliteproject.eu) received 7247 unique visitors, 11595 visits and 198,898 page-views. Other dissemination activities include: the preparation of a biannual newsletter for Spanish refugee support groups, the recording of a radio programme at UNED about the project and the UNED scenario with Spanish refugee support groups, the inclusion in the EADTU Newsletter of news above the project, the undertaking of an interview with MOONLITE’s coordinator by UNED’s Communication Team, the preparation of a news story about one of the MOOCs developed at UNED for the project, and the recording of an interview by the Spanish radio station “Cadena Ser” with a member of the UNED team on the Language MOOCs developed for refugees and migrants. Other publicity about these LMOOCs appeared in the Spain press and different educational blogs. Regarding sustainability, all the content, outputs, MOOCs, webinars, etc., will remain available for the foreseeable future via the project and the partners’ websites and UNED’s MOOC platform.