Research and Experience

Track Chairs

Martin Ebner (TU Graz, Austria)
Susanna Sancassani (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Carlos Alario-Hoyos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)

Call for Papers

The Experience and Research Track sessions will provide participants with the opportunity to debate and learn more about the role, current trends and future directions that MOOCs are taking to continue their online learning delivery in Higher Education as well as to present results with the latest research advances. The track will bring together diverse stakeholders to discuss four important areas around MOOCs. First, by discussing best practices in MOOC production processes, quality assurance, with emphasis on sustainable models that address the issue of certification and credentialing. A second focus is on the incorporation of pedagogy and MOOC design elements that can bring rich learning experiences, as well as new innovative teaching and learning models (e.g. blended or inverse blended learning strategies) that can match the expectations of the stakeholders. Third, we also invite contributions that reimagine and bring new affordances to the role of technology in MOOCs, such as the development or use of new virtual learning environments and social spaces, interactive and interoperable learning objects, immersive and wearable technologies, or techniques such as a gamification, and how all of these impact student engagement and learning outcomes. Last, the multiple roles of analytics within the MOOC ecosystem, for example to systematically optimize production or measure quality, to quantify the effectiveness of different learning designs and models in terms of learners’ engagement and outcomes, or to be included as part of new technological analytics products such as dashboards, adaptation or recommendation engines.

This track welcomes contributions from the different stakeholders involved in the process of developing, teaching, and researching with MOOCs such as educational technologist, designers, policy makers, managers, practitioners or analysts. As in previous editions of EMOOCs conference, in the case of sharing specific experiences, we encourage the submission of contributions that quantify the impact of these experiences and initiatives that they report to some degree while also highlighting best practices that can be useful and applied by different stakeholders. We welcome papers including, but not limited to, the following topics on a MOOC context:

  • Best practices in MOOC production processes, open educational resources, open licenses and interchangeability, methodologies for quality control, teacher training, scalability issues.
  • Innovative teaching practices, MOOC design, new forms of alternative yet rigorous assessment, hybrid and flipped models.
  • Model sustainability, alternative credentials, pricing elasticity, certificate value.
  • Emerging technology trends, learning tools, immersive learning VR/AR, infrastructure as a service, interoperability of learning objects, artificial intelligence, blockchain.
  • New data products embedded in MOOCs, data privacy and policy, attempts to measure the impact of MOOCs on learners, cross-referencing on-campus and online data, learners’ engagement, institution analytics, curriculum design supported by data.
  • Hands-on experiences with MOOCs and examples in terms of usage, pedagogical models or teachers’ as well as students’ experiences
  • Special experience regarding MOOC production, implementation and their usage during the COVID19 pandemic.
  • Role of MOOCs in blending strategies also raised as a consequence of the pandemic period.

Submission of Papers

We have extended the deadline for submissions by one week. Please make sure to submit at least a short abstract and the title of your paper by March 15, 2023. The finalized paper can be submitted by March 22, 2023.

  • Experience Paper, up to 3 pages (presenting just projects and results), will not be published in the conference proceedings
  • Short Paper: up to 5 pages including references
  • Full paper: up to 10 pages including references

There will be official conference proceedings for this track and submissions will be handled through EasyChair. The use of the supplied template is mandatory for your paper to be published in the proceedings. Please remember to indicate the relevant track when you submit your paper.

Short and full papers must be uploaded anonymously as a pdf. Once the paper has been accepted, you will be asked to upload the un-anonymized, camera-ready version (including the Word or LaTeX sources). Lightweight submissions should not be anonymized.

Important note:
If you submit an Experience Paper, please submit it as a short paper in EasyChair (there is no extra upload function for Experience Papers in EasyChair), but write a short note just at the beginning of the paper that it is an Experience Paper. This way you make sure that it is reviewed as an Experience Paper.

Important Dates:
for all time specifications applies the “Anywhere on Earth” time zone (AoE)

  • 15th March 2023: Deadline for submission of short abstract and title of paper
  • 22nd March 2023 (23:59 GMT+12 / 11:59 PM AoE): Deadline for submission of papers
  • April 2023: Notification of acceptance/rejection