The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) has announced that it will host two prestigious conferences in June that will focus on the latest scientific findings on online learning. These are the "European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit" (EMOOCs), Europe's most important summit in the field of Massive Open Online Courses, and "ACM Learning at Scale" (L@S), an international conference on scalable e-learning. Both events will take place in parallel in Potsdam from June 22 to 25, COVID-19 pandemic permitting. Those who cannot be on site will, in any case, have the opportunity to participate in the online version of the conferences.
"Through our Internet learning platform openHPI, which we have been creating since 2012, we have established ourselves as pioneers on the European MOOC landscape. We are therefore particularly pleased to have attracted two specialist conferences of the highest caliber this year," says Institute Director Prof. Christoph Meinel. In addition to openHPI, HPI also develops and operates openSAP and OpenWHO, the platforms of the global software corporation SAP and the World Health Organization (WHO), among others. In addition, the HPI platform is used in the KI-Campus, a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which aims to strengthen competencies in the area of artificial intelligence among the population.
Two conferences at once: ACM Learning at Scale und EMOOCs
The EMOOCs conference will be held for the seventh time, now with a focus on Europe’s role in offering open online courses to all interested parties. Those interested in submitting scientific papers can find call for papers information at https://emoocs2021.eu/. Learning at Scale is organized for the eighth time by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and takes a global look at innovations and results of empirical research on rapidly expandable e-learning offerings. Both events provide opportunities for interaction with leading researchers, practitioners, policy makers, platform operators, and educational institutions.
As HPI Director Meinel reports, the program for this year's EMOOCs conference features six focus areas: Future Solutions, Best Practices, Health, Politics, Business, and International.
Change of universities, work, and healthcare
"For example, we will be looking at the topics that will affect the future such as hybrid universites, smart working environments and rapid digital training for medical staff," says the computer scientist. In the field of healthcare, he adds, the focus will be on a needs analysis for MOOCs and the relevance of online education for the doctor-patient relationship.
As far as policy is concerned, the participants want to discuss, among other things, the influence of MOOCs on the labor market and the question of which conditions open online courses should fulfill in order to be recognized within a traditional training program. "We also want to look at flagship solutions in MOOC creation and show examples of the design features that lead to particularly good learning experiences," says Meinel.
In terms of business, EMOOC participants want to explore what technological and didactic requirements companies should fulfill in order to constantly accompany their workforce throughout working life. "And with international actors, especially from Latin America, Africa, Australia and Asia, we want to discuss aspects such as equality, diversity and inclusion. In doing so, we raise questions regarding the cultural background of MOOCs, possible global guidelines for them, and also the influence of the English language in online courses from U.S. learning platforms," adds the Potsdam scientist.
Meinel points out that participants can also take part in interactive workshops. All information on formats and deadlines can be found in the Call for Papers at https://emoocs2021.eu/index.php/call-for-papers/emoocs/.
