‘Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs) caused a major impact on HEIs worldwide. Business models, target groups, quality standards, certification, sustainability, teaching, delivery & learning methods are all affected. Europe is yet to respond to these emerging trends. Initiatives in the EU exist, but remain isolated, both geographically and per sector. They lack impact on the HEI area as a whole, and do not include the business community to a sufficient extent. A joint European-wide Knowledge Alliance carries huge potential to address these gaps and major challenges. The BizMOOC project aims to strengthen innovation capacity in all parts of Europe through the creation of common standards and frameworks that promote MOOCs for workplace teaching & training, the acquisition of labour market-relevant skills and entrepreneurial activity. It joins experts from 14 HEIs, businesses and networks/NGOs from 11 countries to achieve this goal by the following key activities & results:- Collect and analyse the needs, gaps, good practices and reasons for non-participation of European HEIs, businesses/entrepreneurs and society (especially labour force, jobseekers and non-traditional learners),- Elaborate 3 guidelines, 11 discussion papers, concrete recommendations (for HEIs, businesses, society and policy-makers), good practice collections and provide them in an open access, interactive ‘MOOC BOOK’,- Pilot test the guidelines through 3 types of MOOCs (with 4.000 learners/75 HEIs & businesses) which teach LLL key competences relevant for the labour market,- Create a MOOC network (min. 4.000 actors).Through BizMOOC, we establish a platform with which to successfully plan and implement MOOCs for business use. We enable the target groups to boost their activities and exploit the full potential of MOOCs. This will foster the modernization of education, key competence acquisition, cross-sector knowledge exchange and strengthening of HEI-business cooperation in Europe.
‘Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs) caused a major impact on universities worldwide. Recently, there is huge potential seen in the application of MOOCs for upgrading labour-market relevant skills. Initiatives in the EU exist, but remain isolated, both geographically and per sector. They lack impact on the HEI area as a whole, and do not include the business community to a sufficient extent.The BizMOOC Knowledge Alliance addressed these gaps and major challenges and contributed to this uptake of MOOCs for business use. This was achieved by creating common standards and frameworks that promote MOOCs for workplace teaching & training. It joined experts from universities, businesses and networks/NGOs from 11 countries to achieve this goal by the following key activities & results:- Analysis of needs, gaps and reasons for 3 target groups (non-participation of European universities, businesses and learners) based on 106 interviews and 1.193 survey respondents,- Elaboration of an interactive ‘MOOC BOOK’ (6.825 users and 86 institutions) for universities, businesses, society and policy-makers containing 3 set of guidelines, 14 discussion papers, 50 lessons learnt, 25 recommendations and 20 good practices, based on a mixed-methods approaches analyzing 55 expert inputs (interviews and focus Groups), surveys with 891 and 409 learners, 3 MOOC pilots, peer-review, 2 external evaluators and a QA board with 7 external experts,- Development of 3 different MOOCs catering Lifelong-Learning key competences relevant for the labour market with 5561 enrolments from 98 countries and 3969 active users.All activies were framed with comprehensive quality assurance, evaluation, dissemination, exploitation and sustainability activities. By a multiple channel target group approach – nested in the MOOC BOOK – BizMOOC brought together a strong stakeholder community which can jointly further boost MOOCs for business use and exploit the full potential of MOOCs. All key results are will be maintained beyond project lifetime and are accompanied by follow-up activities.