Overview of papers on enhancement of European Higher Education as presented during the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference in Rome, October 2016

In this contribution we demonstrate that the uptake of MOOCs in Europe is not only maturing but is doing so at a much higher level when compared to the US. The analysis is based on four independent European studies and is compared to similar successive studies conducted in the U.S. It is concluded that the European HEIs are much more involved in MOOCs and also that their reasons to invest in this new format differs in some aspects as well. We argue that these differences between the U.S. and Europe might be related to the differences between higher educational systems, political environments and educational values.

In addition this paper presents and analyses the outcomes of the survey of the HOME project conducted end 2015 in Europe and Canada. The similarities and differences between several European countries are discussed as well. These latest survey results demonstrate that many European higher education institutions are willing to collaborate on scalable services in MOOC provision, and that a regional collaboration is much more likely than outsourcing those services to corporates parties. Consequently different (regional) strategies are highlighted to leverage the full potential of online learning and open education for Europe. The implication of the new survey end 2016 is discussed.

Keywords

collaboration · comparison · European uptake · institutional strategy · MOOCs