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2016 UCL MOOC call report

22 June 2016

Following the announcement of funding to develop three more massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the FutureLearn platform, we received 16 proposals, involving 50 members of staff across 16 academic units of UCL, as well as collaborators from other institutions.

Quad

The call invited proposers to address UCL strategic aims relating to: outreach, research impact, professional development, online learning, learning analytics and UCL Grand Challenges.

Panel members were pleased with the excellent quality of the MOOC submissions and agreed to fund three proposals:

· Research and Innovation in Holocaust Education, Ruth-Ann Lenga, Centre for Holocaust Education

· Global Prosperity: Creating Sustainable Economic Cultures through Social Innovation, Tuuka Toivonen, UCL Institute for Global Prosperity

· Perioperative Medicine in the Developing World, Abigail Whiteman, Anaesthetics, UCLH

Many of the submissions were also of a very high quality but not always ideally suited to the MOOC format, and have been recommended for development on the UCLeXtend platform (https://extend.ucl.ac.uk/ ), which is available for smaller-scale courses. Most had been able to secure additional funding from their department, or from an external collaborator, or both.

Diana Laurillard, Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies said: "The panel was delighted with the range and quality of submissions from across the university. There is a lot of interest in online learning, and in using MOOCs to bring our research to a much wider audience".

In 2015 The Office of the Vice Provost (Education and Student Affairs) contributed funding to the first three courses on FutureLearn (https://www.futurelearn.com ), and these are now running (Making Babies in the 21st Century begins on 21 July at https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/making-babies/1 ). The courses funded under the new call will be up and running within the coming year.

The development of the three MOOCs is being supported by UCL Digital Education and the Learning Technologies Unit.

For further information please contact Diana Laurillard, UCL Knowledge Lab (d.laurillard@ucl.ac.uk) or Matt Jenner, Digital Education (m.jenner@ucl.ac.uk ).