Successful seminar on 'MOOCs - challenges and opportunities for Catalan universities' organized by ACUP

On Wednesday, June 26, took place the international seminar 'Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - challenges and opportunities for universities', organized by the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP) at Casa Convalescència, Barcelona. One hundred representatives from the Catalan higher education system participated in the seminar. MOOCs, the massive open online courses followed by millions of people around the world via Internet are receiving increasing attention from the academic community and the media, questioning traditional ways of teaching and learning.

The president of the ACUP and rector of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Ferran Sancho, opened the seminar. Afterwards, Albert Sangrà, director of the eLearn Center of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) pronounced a conference providing an overview of the current challenges and opportunities of MOOCs for both all kinds of universities.

In the first roundtable, titled 'MOOCs and universities: evolution or revolution?', participated Rebecca Petersen of edX, Jason Mock of Coursera, António Moreira Teixeira of the Open University in Portugal and representative of the European open up Ed initiative and Pedro Aranzadi, director of Universia and promoter of the Spanish platform Miríad X. The board analyzed the differences between the various international initiatives and future vision of MOOCs.

In the second roundtable, titled 'MOOCs and university system in Catalonia vision', participated Lluis Jofre, general director of universities of the Catalan Government, Elena Valderrama representing the UAB, Vanesa Daza on behalf the University Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Miquel Duran representing the University of Girona and Albert Sangrà. The board presented their experiences related with the development of MOOCs and their institutions.

The executive secretary of ACUP, Josep M. Vilalta, concluded the seminar, which was accompanied by an interesting discussion on Twitter (#MOOCs_CAT). The discussion and comments from the speakers is available here. Attached you will find Albert Sangrà's paper and the seminar program.