Ecosign Deliverable D4.1 Report of MOOC Platforms DRAFT v.2

D4.
1 – Report of MOOC platforms
Eco-Innovation Skills for European Designers
Deliverable D4.1 Report of MOOC platforms - DRAFT 2
Lead Beneficiary: CSFPM (Romania)

Approved by: All Consortium
Confidential, only for members of the

Dissemination consortium (including EACEA and
Level: Commission services and project
reviewers)
Beneficiaries
P1 Slovenian Tool and Die Development Centre TECOS SI
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the
P2 MARIBOR SI
University of Maribor
P3 Center Republike Slovenijeza Poklicnoizobrazž evanje CPI SI
P4 Centro Tecnoloó gico Nacional de la Conserva y Alimentacioó n (CTC) CTC ES
Asociacioó n Empresarial Centro Tecnoloó gico del Mueble y la Madera
P5 CETEM ES
de la Regioó n de Murcia
P6 Regional Service for training and employment SEF ES
P7 TEXCLUBTEC TEXCLUBTEC IT
P8 Centro Tessile Cotoniero e Abbigliamento Spa CENTROCOT IT
P9 AICQ SICEV Srl SICEV IT
P10 INCDBA IBA Bucharest IBA RO
P11 Asociaţia Auditorilor şi Evaluatorilor de Mediu din Industrie ECOEVALIND RO
National Romanian Sectorial Committee for Vocational Training in
P12 CSFPM RO
Environmental.
Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA
Project Start Date: 01/11/2015
Disclaimer: The European Commission support to produce this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the
views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained
therein.
Page 1 of 67
D4.1 – Report of MOOC platforms
Table of track changes
Version Date Changes
CSFPM Elena Laslu
Denise Arsene
Domnica Cotet
ECOEVALIND Gheorghe Bucataru
Gabriel Mihail Laslu
Ana Maria Albu
Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 2 of 67

We invite all partners to complete the text with their chosen Platform / Distributor for the
course delivery in their own language and possibly in English, and also to make their own
comments and additions to this Draft.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
0. Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………..……………4
1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………5
2. Objectives …………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………..……..5
3. Roles and responsibilities …………………………………………………………………...……………………………….6
4. Criteria for choosing the platforms on wich
are to be hosted the ECOSIGN MOOC courses ……………………………………………………….……..……….7
5. Extending MOOC in Education ……………………………………………………………………………………………...8
6. Brief overview of MOOC providers / platforms …………………………………………………………..……..14
6.1 Platform requirements………………………………………………………………………………….….14
6.1.1 Criteria for selecting a platform for our MOOC……………………………………………...………...14
6.1.2 How to use criteria in selecting the Platform(s)............................................................................. 21
6.1.3 Selecting a MOOC provider / MOOC platform ends.......................................................................23
6.2 MOOC providers /vendors / platforms……………………………………...…..…………………….24
6.2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of hosting the MOOC course.................................................25
6.2.2 Considerations on fees applied by MOOC platforms………………………………………………..26
6.2.3 Overview of the most Known MOOC Platforms available.........................................................28
6.2.4 How difficult is to find MOOC platforms........................................................................................... 60
7. A brief analysis of MOOC …………………………………………….………………………………………………………61
8. MOOC Environment ……………………………………………..……………………………………………………………..65
9. Platform chosen by the CSFPM and ECOEVALIND partners in Romania …….……………………..66

Annex 1: Partners opinions on selecting MOOC platforms for ECOSIGN Course hoisting
0. Abstract
Online education has become a reality of our day and, sooner or later, it enters our lives in
formal or non-formal education.
People in the modern world want to enter the labor market as earlier as possible, trying to
develop their skills through experience as soon as they complete an acceptable form of
education. Having the opportunity to use online education, they can return whenever they
may consider to continue their studies or to pursue continuous professional training. The
opportunity created for the online education providers to develop courses that enable the
social workforce to learn online and complete these courses in leisure is very attractive and
useful.
Employers are also not very interested in how skills are acquired either through online
courses or from college / university; what matters is how competence is mastered and
whether it can be used / exploited in the workplace.
MOOCs are the key words of online education. These MOOC platforms are developed by
leading universities, making available online courses and enabling education to reach the
masses.
This present study aims to identify the necessary criteria to be able to select the MOOC
platforms that meet the requirements of the courses developed under the ECOSIGN project
of the ERASMUS + program.
To identify the MOOC platforms that meet the project requirements, we will examine the
opportunities and challenges these platforms face online.
One of the important challenges is how education providers can maintain the quality of
course materials and can pass on the quality of knowledge to the beneficiaries (students).
On the other hand, it is worth studying how to obtain certificates and whether certificates
can be authenticated by the labor market and whether MOOC courses are recognized or not.
The study should concretize these aspects in each of the partner countries in the project.
A review of at least 15 current MOOC platforms will be performed. This study will take into
account the availability of the platforms for delivering the training course and their
requirements. General aspects like idioms supported by the platforms, formats they

support, the students they target will be taken into account. The study will try to measure
the impact that the courses offered in those platform has. Finally this study will select a list
of 5 of the platforms where teaching the course.
VET provider for each country will perform this task.
1. Introduction
A course on a MOOC platform is an online course that aims at interactive participation on a
large scale and direct access via the Internet. Moreover, these courses are addressed to a
large number of "students" with free participation.
In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, lectures, and problem sets,
MOOCs provide interactive forums for users that help build a community for students,
teachers, and teaching assistants. MOOCs are a development of distance learning.
MOOCs are a new approach to distance learning concepts with a difference: high audience
and free (or almost free) open access
Several educational institutions in the world are in the process of granting equivalent
recognition for MOOCs in the learning / teaching / training process.
The Ecodesign project aims through this WP4, '' Validation and Recognition at National and
European Level '' of online specific ecodesigner courses, to ensure that all training materials
developed in the WP3 work program are deployed in several e-learning platforms by
creating an open online massive course (MOOC).
2. Objectives
According to the project Ecosign the accomplisment of T4.1 target, "MOOC platform
analysis" includes a study of at least 15 current MOOC platforms. This study / report will
specify:
Availability of platforms for delivery of the training course and their requirements.
General aspects such as platform-supported expressions, the formats that they support
/accept, the students / learners they are targeting will be considered. The study will
attempt to measure the impact of the courses offered on those platforms.
Finally, this report will select a list of 5 platforms in which the course will be held.
All partners will participate in the study. The VET providers from each country will perform
this task.

The Consortium has identified as the main target group:
- Students / learners (industrial design / industrial engineering and similar) or unemployed

who wish to aquire a specific training for a particular sector
- Designers / planners from a particular sector interested in accessing a different sector
3. Roles and responsibilities

The WP4 coordinating partner, CSFPM Bucharest, establishes through this report a working methodology to be
amended, if necessary, at the proposal of the other partners. According to the project provisions in the
implementation of WP4 all partners are involved as follows:
WP4 Training Course Delivery CSFPM
T4.1 Analyze MOOC platforms CENTROCOT/CETEM/ECOEVALIND/MARIBOR
T4.2 Delivering Course in selected

IBA
MOOC platforms.
T4.3 OER protection CETEM
T4.4 Harmonize and validate the

CSFPM/SEF/SICEV/CPI
learning units
T4.5 Validation and recognition plan. CSFPM/SEF/SICEV/CPI
With regard to the WP4.1 study, "The Analysis of the MOOC Platform", its implementation
falls into charge of the four VET providers (CETEM, CENTROCOT, MARIBOR, ECOEVALIND)
The course will be available after the project (Ecosign) has have been completed in / on at
least 5 different MOOC platforms (Open Massive Online Educational Resources Platforms) in
at least 5 different languages (English included). In addition, they will be linked to other
MOOC European dissemination portals (eg http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu).
The main benefit for each end-user will be to acquire skills and knowledge in terms of
ecological design (eco-design), sustainable development, and strategies to reduce the
environmental impact of the manufacturing / fabrication industries.
ECOSIGN results will have a long-term impact on the following user groups:
• designers of goods / electronic / electrical products
• clothing designers
• designers and workers for food packaging
• learners / students from schools / vocational education institutions, trainers, teachers, etc.
• Designers / planners from a particular sector interested in accessing a different sector

• unemployed people who want to receive/ aquire a specific training for a particular sector.
4. Criteria for choosing the platforms on wich

the ECOSIGN MOOC courses are to be hosted
- Finding MOOC providers / platforms that have offered free courses to a large number of
students.
- Finding MOOC providers / platforms that individual trainers or organizations (profit or

nonprofit) can use to easily create a MOOC course and which are willing to host design
courses.
- Recognition (certification) of the course completion - this criterion differentiates platforms

by allowing to compare the "values" that a student can obtain after completing a course
(apart from knowledge and skills).
- Suppliers / MOOC platforms must be able to provide the necessary technological resources
to host / accommodate the target group of the project.
- The costs of hosting the MOOC course imposed by the chosen / designated MOOC
Provider / Platform must be minimal, as the platform provides the technology required to
post / upload and run the course and to perform the students' assessment and also the
necessary technical assistance.
- Provide the possibility to issue a certificate of graduation.
- Provide the opportunity to publish the course as an OER or to integrate OER into the
course;
- Provided that the above criteria are met, the platform should ensure a good visibility for
the target group.
- It is unlikely that there will be 5 platforms / distributors able to ensure that all
criteria are met, so the partners from each country in the consortium have to designate a
specific platform to implement the Eco-Design MOOC course in their own language (as
appropriate as they consider).
- For the English language course, another platform will be chosen, by common
agreement, the proposal will be done either by the CSFPM or by any of the other partners.

5. Extending MOOC in Education

MOOCs are "online courses designed for a large number of participants that can be
accessed by anyone and anywhere as long as users / learners / attending online courses
have an Internet connection, MOOC courses are open to everyone without require prior
qualifications for admission and offer a full / complete online course experience free of
charge." (Jansen & amp; Schuwer, 2015). The paper (see Table 1) presents the analysis of the
number of students participating in various forms of education in the EU in 2015.
From universities' replies, it is found that the percentage of students enrolled in

MOOC courses is similar to that of those enrolled at their own university and also by the
number of those enrolled in postgraduate courses. This demonstrates the great extent of
MOOC courses in the EU.
Table 1. Main target groups for MOOC offering in Europe according to the EU 2015 survey.
MOOCs provide a plurality of offers, both for students and all kind of learners, and for
those seeking professional development, see Table 2, reflecting even the current blurring of
the boundaries between public and private provision and between academic and education
at the work place boundaries.
The offers are not only placed in academic space, but also include CPD (Continuing
Professional Development) for continuing professional development, and are explicitly
tailored either to some employers or to certain professions.
Other offers, such as diplomas and certified courses ( included in the table), could
also be devoted to both students and other learners, active workers or job seekers.

Table 2 Characteristics of various types of MOOC
Source: https://donaldhtaylor.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/what-price-moocs/
The number of courses delivered / available online free of charge or with a modest payment
has seen a formidable increase in recent years (see figure 2)

Fig 2. Increase the number of courses (Source: Class Central, GSV Asset Management)
Table 3 Shows the main MOOC platforms / distributors and the number of courses and the
number of users at the 2014 level
According to https://www.class-central.com/languages , the language in which the courses

are held is predominantly English, followed in French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German ....
After 4 years, in 2018, there is quite the same hierarchy for the best 6 MOOC platforms
available on the online educational environment
Some criteria (more valued today by potential learners who are seeking for MOOCs) offer
the basis (core metrics) for ranking these 6 platform in 2018:
 Does the platform offer verified certificates?
 Does the platform offer completion certificates for all courses for free?
 How many courses are offered with the ability to gain college credit?
 How many learning pathways or specializations are offered?
 How many accredited degrees can be earned?

 How many courses are available?
 How many search filters does the platform have?
 How many categories of courses are there?
 Are there self-paced courses?
 Are there scheduled courses?
 Is there both automated and peer (or other human) grading?
 How many languages are video subtitles available in?
 Is there a fully functional mobile app?
 Are there course-specific forums?
 Is there a course ranking or review system?
 Does the platform have social profiles?
 Is there a recognition and reputation system for users who contribute to the
community?
 Is there a system that allows students to learn together?

 How many partner institutions does the platform have?
 How many courses are provided by partnered institutions?
 What is the comparative ranking of the platform’s partner universities?
 Are there instructor profiles?
Every core metric (from the above 5) was assigned a weight based on its importance in
determining the overall quality of the platform. Once it was weighted each platform’s core
metric scores ( there were assigned scores between “0” and “10” – those that performed the
best were given higher scores), they were combined together to get the overall score for that
platform.
Here are the weights for the core metrics:
It is to be underlined that ”completion rate ” is not included as a metric in thhis evaluation

because many learners don’t even intend to obtain a certificate of completion when they
start the course. Other goals may exist, like:
 Investigating whether a certain field or subject is interesting to the particular student
 Gaining a rough understanding of multiple subjects
 Learning about a single concept within a MOOC

Thus the Best MOOC Platforms of 2018, from the point of view of learners, who are
seeking for quality and reliable learning online, are:
1.
– 9,5 points
Best for: Learners who want access to the most MOOCs and widest variety of learning
pathways
2. – 6,6 points
Best for: Those who want access to free courses on the widest variety of topics
3. – 6,3 points
Best for: Those who want to pursue a career in a technical field without attending college
4. – 5,6 points
Best for: offering a powerful new way to learn online. Every course has been designed
according to principles of effective learning, through storytelling, discussion, visible
learning, and using community support to celebrate progress.
5. – 2,7 points
Best for: providing online courses and lectures in higher education. Courses are free and
open for anyone to enroll and participate. iversity is the only MOOC platform offering
courses with ECTS-integration
6. – 1,2 points
Best for: providing great training and courses to your employees to upgrade their skills,
however they also promise career upgrades and job placements, often with other companies
and possibly your competitors

6. Brief overview of MOOC vendors / platforms
6.1 Platform requirements
There are many reasons why it is considered convenient to use the services of a
platform when developing a MOOC.
Note that it is entirely possible to run a MOOC without paying for services and
servers, services that have great user interfaces and offer great functionality. However, it
may be hard to keep track of discussions. This may already happen if you have a central
discussion forum plus comments on YouTube. Some sites, in particular those for discussion
forums, may require a separate log-in. And finally, in a mashup it becomes hard to say what
a learner has or has not accomplished. Hence, issuing a certificate may not possible.
6.1.1. Criteria for selecting a platform for our MOOC

Selecting a platform may not need to be very difficult as we may be able to quickly rule out
certain options based on certain requirements. However, it is important that we be aware of
all potential issues in case we overlook something that later proves to be important.
The first category of criteria we will look at is under the heading of “platform functionality”,
that is: does the proposed platform have all the features that we feel we need in our MOOC.
 Can the platform embed YouTube videos onto course pages? (as this
looks a lot better that linking out to YouTube in a separate window)
 Can the platform handle objective tests or quizzes and store the results
for other uses? (controlling progress or issuing certificates)
 Does the platform facilitate Peer Assessment? (important if we want to do

large scale assessment of higher order learning outcomes)
 Does the platform have discussion forums or can it allow us to link out to
other services that will enable group discussion?
 Does the platform have other features that enable group work?

 Does the platform have data analytics tools that will allow us to analyse large
amounts of data to identify how our course might be improved?
 Does the platform facilitate progress tracking allowing participants to see their
progress easily and see what they have to do next?
 Can the platform automatically issue certificates?
 Can the platform accept payments for specific services? (e.g. personal
assessment and feedback)
 Can the platform verify the identity of people taking tests?
 Do we require the platform to have significant storage?
 Does the platform have the necessary bandwidth to guarantee performance

given the expected pattern of usage?
 Can users download materials from the platform so that users can view the
course offline?
 Are there any restrictions on the number of users who can register?
 Does the platform have access rights for many types of users (e.g. non-editing
instructor that cannot change the course, guest user that cannot participate)
 Are there any legal restrictions in the terms of use of the platform that might
make it unsuitable? (who has access to learner data, who owns the course
materials)
 How easy is it to set up the course on the platform?
 Is the platform easy to use for the course builder and is there help available?
 Is the platform easy to use for the learner and is there orientation and help
available?

 Does the learner have mobile access?
 Does it have accessibility aids for learners with impairments?
 How much will it cost us to host the course and what are the marginal costs as
usage increases?
 How visible will our MOOC be on this site? (e.g. Is it hosted where people come
to look for courses?)
 Are there any constraints imposed by the platform provider such as a

development timeline or quality assurance requirements, not to mention
intellectual property or other legal constraints?
 Is our target audience relevant to the choice of platform? (e.g. where do they
tend to look for training opportunities)
If is to go deeper into the meaning of these selection criteria we will find out that some of
them are more important than the others, considering our main purpose:

Most of the selection criteria (above mentioned) for choosing the most appropriate
Platform on which to upload and then run our MOOC are dedicated to the Platforms
themselves and they are not considering at all our capabilities to work with that Platforms
(that means at least to master some specific hardware and software).
Usually the teaching staff from VET providers (partners in the Project), who have
significant domain expertise and good presentations skills have been encouraged to build
open courses for the scope of the Project. However such teaching staff are unlikely to have
the learning technology skills to build MOOC courses on their own, in which case
the institution needs to consider how it can cost-effectively provide facilities and support to
minimise the new skills teaching staff need to learn and minimise their workload while
keeping the cost of centralised services under control.

In a small institution it can be more difficult to provide support for MOOC builders. It
is unlikely that providing a dedicated MOOC support person is enough so the support needs
to be integrated into normal IT support services. Several support persons should be trained
in using the equipment and software and should also be capable of carrying out post-
processing and course assembly work.
Thus, depending on the staff available for working with our MOOC on the Platform, it
is very important to take into account the following criteria (addressing our own staff)
when selecting the proper Platform to upload and run the Course:
When choose the platform It is not compulsory
Depending on how particulary good is the Author with the Computers

What skills does the Author
It is to be avoided Any Platform
(MOOC builder) have ? Not particulary
Platforms that are
Good enough or
can be
good IT specialist
difficult to use approached
The Platform has been used before
Choose the
Any previous experience ? simpliest and
yes Choose the same No
the friendly one
for use
Help materials available ? The platform should provide help materials to guide the Author step by step în
uploading the Course and then in running it efficiently
For professionals may be not
yes
needed
The Course is made for the students / learners, so if they have difficulties in accessing it , no
matter how good is the Course, it is useless. Thus, when selecting the Platform for the
Course running, the following criteria should be considered too:
When choose the platform it must

It is not compulsory
have it
Starting with the enrollment and finishing whith the completion / graduation of the
Course, the student / learner should be helped and guided even through an
Orientation Module
Learner help / orientation ? Almost any screen / page on the
Orientation
Platform should display a functional Optional:
Module
”Help” button
The Platform provides facilities for access from mobile devices used by the
learners
Better if it diplays
Mobile? exactly what it is No need if the signal is too weak to
yes
displayed on a large be suitable for a mobile device
screen
Accessibility The platform should provide special features for accessibility of the people
having an impairement either vizual or hearing
 Vizual / hearing impairment
yes Sometime optional is acceptable
When building a MOOC in order to upload it and run it on a MOOC platform there are
involved costs. Even when the hosting platform is declared as being free, the costs are there. That is
why an important criterion îîn selecting the platform is:

When choose the platform it must have it It is not compulsory
How much money do we Low costs MOOC development is the target. This may result in some reduction in quality but it may
be necessary in order to achieve significant savings.
want to spend to have a Charge for training /
No costs at all (no charge for hosting our MOOC) Optional:
slightly better service ? guidance
using a service in the cloud; The most interesting platforms for a lean production are, of course,
those that live in the cloud and are open for almost every author at little or no cost.
For some cloud-based Rather than using a dedicated MOOC
Hosting platforms, you just have to platform, you can use a standard learning
No cost
sign up, e.g. Udemy and management system such as Moodle and
Eliademy. maybe dress up the user interface.
Storage MOOC platforms administrators, when hosting our MOOC may ask for extra charge if we are going
to store a large amount of course materials (or auxiliar materials) on the Platform
No extra charge for storage course materials Sometime optional is acceptable
Even if it is to be paid an acceptable cost for hosting our MOOC on a Platform, it is quite difficult to
admit extra significant ”marginal cost per user”demnd by the Platform administrators (owners) when
Marginal cost per user large number of users (mainly learners) appears
Not acceptable -
It is entirely possible to run a MOOC without paying for services and servers, services
that have great user interfaces and offer great functionality. However, it may be hard to keep
track of discussions. This may already happen if you have a central discussion forum plus
comments on YouTube. Some sites, in particular those for discussion forums, may require a
separate log-in. And finally, in a mashup it becomes hard to say what a learner has or has not
accomplished. Hence, issuing a certificate may not possible.
Another important criterion when it is to be selected a Hosting platform for our MOOC is
how easy it is to get our hosting service setup
When choose the platform we must be

Possible downsides
aware of
If it (platform) is in the cloud it can be quite easy to use; often we just need to register and
then create a Course (our MOOC)
Service (cloud) Better is running our course with an “all-
Some of these platforms work on a
project basis and wish to review or at
inclusive platform”
least greenlight our project
There is an alternative to services provided by a well estabished MOOC Platforms; This is
DIY (Do It Yourself) on our own web space. For this there are free software available like
Moodle or edX, which can be downloaded and setup in our own webspace.
We have full control, a platform that we
Do It Yourself (web space) There are (enough) people
are hosting on our own, maybe locally
How easy is to (staff in our organization))
or at some provider. The downside is
DIY able to do this, have they
that we have to take care of installation
the required skiils
and administration
Website / Mash-up There is an other alternative: Not using a standard dedicated MOOC platform from those
available on the market; You just build an Website and have a mash-up with other services
as well
There are (enough) people (staff in our To run a MOOC without a central
organization)) able to do this, have they the platform, in the link-type approach, you
required skiils need some sort of hub.
When selecting a Hosting platform for our MOOC it is very important to be aware of:

How will people find our MOOC ?

A) If we use our own website / use our own platform it may be difficult for
people to find that; we must do a lot of marketing (not to mention costs
envolved)
B) If we use a hosting service (a consecrated MOOC platform) that has a lot of
other MOOCs on it, this is more probably to be the place where people actually
go for finding (even) our MOOC; This is also the very place where MOOCs
agregators (services which collect informations about lots of MOOCs) look to
find out about MOOCs. This can be a way to make our MOOC more visible
Visibility is a determining factor that both Edinburgh (2013) and the University of London
(2013) recognize as the main reason for joining Coursera.
When choose the platform we must be

Possible downsides
aware of
Any constraints imposed by the platform provider such as a development timeline or
quality assurance requirements etc; some services claim exclusive rights to all
coursework handed in
As we use the platform owned and
administrated by others, it is The Platform is checking everything we
understandable if they ask for a Quality are doing and only if they release for us
check of our MOOC; However apart
from this quality control it is better to the ”green light” we can procede further
give us complete freedom to move on on
our Course
The hosting Platform may reserve rights over the materials contained in our Course
and put up on the Platform; other legal issues or just put in the ”small print” of the
contract / agreement
we must check the small print and
make sure we know our rights.
Not acceptable if they claim exclusive rights However any time one gets into a
to all coursework handed in relationship (contractual) with a MOOC
Platform he must accept the Terms of
that Patform
Usually on a Platform may be constraints regarding copyright, which is a form of
intellectual property
There is one way to avoid problems with
copyrighted material if they are legally make sure is that the link does not lead
available on the web for free – instead of your participants to crash into a
providing the material itself in your course commercial paywall.
you provide a link to the website
This should be a major criterion in selecting the most appropriate hosting platforms
for our MOOC. Just because using this criterion we can reduce considerably, from the
beginning, the number of platforms from which to make the selection.

Our main target groups will be :
 Vocational Students
 Designers of packaging for food industry
 Designers of electronic/electrical goods
 Designers of textile, shoes
It is hard to believe that potential learners from these target groups shold be interested
in finding our MOOC if it will be hosted on a Platform dedicated to courses about Big Data,
Journalism, Software Development and so on.
The real audience for our Course is not the traditional university student but what
nowadays someone calls the “lifelong career learner”: someone who might be well beyond
their college years, but takes online courses with the goal of achieving professional and
career growth.
6.1.2 How to use criteria in selecting the Platform(s)
These criteria (and maybe others more or some of them neglected) may be used in
different ways to guide us when selecting the more appropriate Platform to host our course
MOOC. However there is available free on https://youtu.be/ijaX3X8TyN4 a very interesting,
and useful tool: Platform Selection Tool, developed for the Erasmus+ LoCoMoTion
project.
This tool consists of a simple spreadsheet tool that uses weighted scoring to allow
you to list all the criteria that are relevant to you, indicate the relative importance of each,
and then score each platform against each. It will calculate weighted scores for each
platform. A shared version of the tool that you can copy and edit is available here [1] and a
downloadable Excel version is available here [2], and you can view a video explaining its use
here: https://youtu.be/ijaX3X8TyN4
It should be said that the numerical results from this tool can and should be skeptically
considered. If the output is not as you expected or hoped, it may be because your inputs
have not been carefully considered enough. If the tool is recommending a particular
platform that you do not intuitively feel is correct, consider the reasons why you feel that
way and then check:
 Do you have criteria in your list that quantify those reasons?
 Does the weighting you have given to all criteria realistically reflect the relative
importance of those reasons?
This may feel like you are manipulating the results to get the platform you want, but it
also helps you to analyse more carefully the exact criteria that are influencing your choice.
In the end, it is up to you to be honest with yourself, even to the point of selecting a
platform that you initially had discounted.

Example for using the TOOL:
Selecting a platform may not need to be very difficult as you may be able to quickly
rule out certain options based on certain requirements.
However, it is important that you be aware of all potential issues in case you overlook
something that later proves to be important.
6.1.3 Selecting a MOOC provider / MOOC platform ends

when that MOOC provider select you too (accept you
and your MOOC)

Every platform have their own course of approval process and parameters over
require you to make a proposal. Some may involve tedious paperwork but others can be
very straightforward. You will definitely need an elevator speech to hook the gatekeepers to
look idea.
You will need and detailed course description and a table of contents to and a table of
contents to outline what you will teach how long the course is and whom the courses is for.
You will also provide iOS of your course instructors and introduction to your organization
which must show that you have the proper expertise and experience you need for
developing such a course. Some platforms will also asked you to submit a sample course
video.
The difference between the course proposal to your board and senior management
and the one submitted to a MOOC platform is that they have very different emphasis while
the former should emphasize how it will help with your existing service mandate and make
your organization needs the latter should focus on the timely and broad application
throughout the global community of what you're going to teach.
Do not start producing a MOOC without an acceptance from the provider. If your
course proposal is rejected by every single provider you approach probably it is because of
one or more of the following reasons:
a) your topic is not considered of interest to international learning community
b) there are existing MOOCs on the same topic
c) you did not demonstrate that you have the requisite capacity to develop such a MOOC
If this occurs you may have to go back to the drawing board and change your
proposal. After the initial approval of your proposal the provider will assign a course
coordinator to work with you to make sure you deliver the course on time and on quality.
There will be multiple checkpoints in the production process and if you fail to hit the
milestone on time or if the quality does not meet their standards your course may not be
listed or even if it's listed it could be cancelled
This course coordinators are generally Platform specialists . Their job is not just
gatekeeping (a function or system that controls access or operations to files, computers,
networks, or the like); They're also there to help us to take advantage of their knowledge and
experience with the specific Platform and general design framework.
Ask questions and ask for help while developing your MOOC . Remember they are
also indispensable members of your MOOC community
6.2 MOOC providers /vendors / platforms

Now that we have established our criteria (more or less important for selection), and
we have at least a proposal for a ”Selection tool”, all what remains to do is to find Platforms
available on the market and to analyse them.
Fortunately this study is done through office / desk research and what matters is the
literature and the specifications / data available on the internet.
Unfortunately, today there are dozens of MOOC platforms that have already gained a
reputation in the field and many others less visible and known that should be considered if
they meet or do not meet our criteria.
The only pertinent analysis that would confirm or fail to meet the established criteria
involves testing each platform for a period of time sufficient for each criterion to be
highlighted. This would imply an enormous amount of time and money (not all platforms
allow free hosting of a MOOC), and even if we make finally the best choices it may be too late
because the main purpose of our Project is to deliver the course and not to choose the best
available suitable platform (platforms anyway are in a continuous process of evolution and
their technical and administrative conditions can change from one day to the next)
Since the launch of the first 3 major MOOC platforms in 2012, we have seen numbers
growing year on year reaching a total of 57 MOOC platforms by the end of 2017 according
to numbers collected by MoocLab.
Based on user numbers obtained for 29 out of the 57 platforms, someone can
estimate the total global number of MOOC users to be in excess of 100 million learners
worldwide.
Besides these well-known and world-known platforms, there are many others
that host and manage MOOC courses at lower, local or regional levels owned by Universities,

Associations of Entrepreneurs, Professional Associations, Companies etc. having a lower
notoriety and sometimes activating in a closed circuit. But these are also not to be neglected
if it comes to the conclusion that they can meet the required criteria for being selected to
host our MOOC.
It would be useless to try to analyze them all, especially since many of the principles
of operation are found on all platforms and only some features sometimes differentiate
them sensitively
6.2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of hosting the MOOC

course on a consecrated MOOC platform
One of the benefits is visibility, a determining factor that both Edinburgh (2013) and
London University (2013) recognize as the main reason for joining Coursera. Another
reason is the technological support they offer. Creating a content management platform for a
MOOC may involve a cost that exceeds the budget allocated by many universities to teach
learners online free of charge. Outsourcing these services using established MOOC
platforms is often considered as a more accessible option.
However, being part of a platform like Future - Learn involves some compromises. For
example, course material, both in writing and audiovisual, is subject to demanding quality
standards. This has raised production costs to figures that not all institutions can afford.
Another compromise that needs to be considered is the distribution of content and activities
that the platform shares in "steps" that are classified into videos, activities, discussions and
assessments / ratings. Teachers must adhere to such a classification that could conflict with
their vision and their budget of time. The same is true for evaluation, because the only
options available are tests and self-assessments, a protocol that only the platform controls.
Therefore, it is recommended to combine face-to-face examination with the test tools
available on the platform.
In terms of accreditation, a possible way to approach MOOC's accreditation could be
through partnerships between MOOC providers and academic institutions or other
accreditation bodies whereby MOOC's graduation might not provide a course credit by
itself, but instead it may allow the student to pay, if he wishes, an examination accredited by
the academic institution.
Even if it costs a little money, it could be a cheap and attractive route for qualifying,
compared to a face-to-face course; At the same time, the academic institution could benefit
both from a broader exposure and a higher number / capacity of students without
expanding their physical campus.
6.2.2 Considerations on fees applied by MOOC platforms

MOOC-platforms offer a rather functional platform with standard features such as
discussion forums and quizzes, carry out marketing for their platform, generate a significant
number of participants, and analyze their behaviors and learning outcomes within the
platform .
So, when it comes to business models, MOOC platforms move to the center of interest.
On the one hand because they offer different possibilities of re-financing their MOOC
production costs to institutions of higher education; on the other hand because they need a
business model of their own to finance their own costs for operating and developing their
platform.
Offering free access to the course and its components is a substantial characteristic of
MOOCs – at least at the moment. Therefore, participants cannot be charged for attending a
course and for using its learning materials during the course. But they can be charged for
additional services like individual supervision, additional learning materials, or examination
fees.
Usually the gained revenue is shared between the platform provider and the MOOC
provider in a certain apportionment.
However, these fee-based services do not gain nearly enough money to cover the costs
for operating a MOOC platform or even to cover the costs for producing a MOOC.
Thus, two additional financing models come into play: Venture capital financing is
especially very popular in the USA where this financing model has a long tradition. Public
authority funding is rather common in Europe, either by the government (e.g. by ministries
of science and/or education) or by academia itself. When analyzing business models for
MOOC platforms, private and/or public funding structures are core components of these
models.
Considering the freedom of education and its independency from private investors,
venture capital is a controversial financing method for MOOC platforms, although currently
it seems absolutely necessary. In addition, the newest trends show that even venture capital
is not enough to operate a MOOC platform sustainably with a balanced budget. In this
context the overseer of Stanford University's massive open online courses program, John
Mitchell, predicts the university will turn away from offering online courses for free.
Under these circumstances establishing a cost model for a long term provision for an
xMOOC platform is not a simple task and solid research work has to be carried out.

For authors, almost all MOOC platforms charge them for hosting their MOOCs on the
Platform.
Many time it is a challange to be approved you and your MOOC to run on their
Platform.
Some time there are direct fee to be paid monthly ar eveb yearly, sometimes there are
hidden costs to be paid for hosting your MOOC even when hosting is declared free.
However there are some MOOC Platforms which offer free hosting for your MOOCs
There are available also Standalone Platforms to Sell Online Courses
These are platforms geared toward individual subject matter entrepreneurs or small
businesses that want a relatively turnkey way to create their own branded site to sell online
courses.
Also, unlike Udemy, they allow you full control over your user data. While the feature
sets are relatively similar, they can be very different in their “look and feel” as well as in how
focused they are on helping course entrepreneurs succeed – e.g., by providing good
resources, educational content, strong support. Be sure to check out the free trial options,
where available, so that you have a chance to kick the tires before committing.
6.2.3 Overview of the most Known MOOC Platforms available

1) The Coursera Platform
Coursera is a profit oriented/ profitable company that was initiated by Andrew Ng and
Daphne Koller, computer science professors at Stanford University, in 2012.
It is the best platform for: students / learners who want access to the most MOOCs and the
widest variety of learning paths
The main advantage of the Coursera platform is its amplitude / scope - it has the most
MOOCs, the most learning paths, the most partner institutions, and offers the most learning
languages (to take a MOOC).
Partner universities of the Coursera platform also have the highest ranks / cumulative
positions (among universities in the world).
Unfortunately, no one can "host" his own MOOC on the Coursera platform (neither
organization, nor individuals).
The platform only hosts MOOC courses that come from the partner universities.
Features (2015):
• Profit / Not for Profit: For Profit
• Accreditation / Verified Certificates: Yes (Paid)
• On Mobile Platform: Yes
• Number of registered students: 15.2 million (approx.)
• Types of courses offered: Ranging from Astronomy to Business Management
• No. of courses offered: 1451
• Platform Technology: Proprietary (Closed) softwarePlatforma edX
2) The edX platform

edX is a nonprofit company set up in 2012 by Harvard and MIT universities, and is
currently in partnership with the world's leading institutions (from education).
One aspect of edX that makes the platform stand out is that its technology is open source -
this means that partner institutions can improve and add features of that will benefit the
users they are trying to attract.
edX is the only platform that provides MOOCs on a large scale similar to the Coursera
platform. For example, Coursera has 2,150 MOOCs, edX has 1,500, and the next in this
hierarchy, the closest platform, has only 294.
The main and the best feature of the edX platform is the domains of the MOOCs that it offers
(the wide variety of themes / subjects / issues addressed).
The platform offers courses in 16 different categories of subjects / academic fields.
The biggest problem with edX is the lack of any recognized accreditation / certification
degree. While other platforms such as Coursera offer several types of certifications, edX's

sole accreditation takes the form of its MicroMasters program, which asks you to go through
the admission process at a university.
There are free tutorials that teach you how to build and put your own MOOC on the
platform.
Because it is for non-profit, edX has to cover the costs. Currently, it charges the
institutions that use the platform, and the services provided. But edX top management
personnel has recently admitted that it has not yet decided what will be the main source of
income. In this sense, the latest move is to join forces with Google.
The structure of edX payments / fees / honorarium is similar to that of Coursera. You can
hear free courses, but you will not have access to the entire course experience. You do not
get any certificate for copleting the course / graduating the course you are attending /
hearing, so you will have to pay a fee if you want to show / prove your progress to your
colleagues or your employers.
Features (2015):
• Profit / Not for Profit: not for Profit

• Accreditation / Verified Certificates: Yes
• On Mobile Platform: Yes (limited MOOCs)
• Number of registered students: 2.6 million
• Types of courses offered: Wide ranging
• Platform Technology: Open Source
3) Udacity Platform
It does not offer MOOCs on a large scale like Coursera and edX, and its main partner
educational institutions are not universities (the only university is the one from Georgia with its
top ranked 100 partners from the world).
Instead, Udacity's main partners are corporations like Google, Amazon, and IBM Watson.
Prices for Udacity are somewhat less complicated than those of the Coursera platform -
most courses are free, but you have to pay for Nanodegrees (Nano Diplomas / Nano Academic
Degrees / Nanocertificates). For example, if you want to do an introductory programm for
learning programming (for computers), you can do it for free, but if you want to transform this
into a Nanodegree (Nanocertificate), you will have to pay a fee.
Unlike Coursera and edX, Udacity offers only MOOCs that relate to technology - the platform
is a peaceful / non-aggressive / civil product of Silicon Valley.
Like the Coursera, Udacity platform only hosts courses designed by Partners.
Features (2015):

• Profit / Not for Profit: For Profit
• Accredited / Verified Certificates: Yes (Paid)
• On Mobile Platform: Yes
• Number of registered students: 1.6 million
• Types of courses offered: More Technical Courses
• Platform Technology: Open Source
4) Platform Iversity
Iversity is an online educational platform with the headquarters in Berlin. Starting in

October 2013, Iversity has self specialized in providing lectures and online courses in the field
of higher education, especially MOOCs (massive open courses online).
Courses are free and open for anyone to sign up and participate. Many of them are in English
or German, but also in other languages. Iversity cooperates with individual teachers as well as
with different European universities
Starting in February 2015, it has a base of 600,000 online users enrolled in / at 63 courses
offered by 41 partner universities. Iversity is the only MOOC platform offering courses with the
integration of ECTS transferable credits. Iversity has branches in Bernau near Berlin, Germany
and in Berlin.
For producing courses, Iversity collaborates with European universities and individual
teachers. Lecturers design their own MOOCs with technical support from Iversity.
5) FutureLearn Platform
It is a digital education platform set up in December 2012. The company is wholly owned by
The Open University from Milton Keynes, England.
It is a massively open online learning platform (MOOC), and since January 2017, there have
been included 109 UK and international partners including non-university partners.
To allow you to publish / upload a course on the futurelearn.com platform, you must be /
become a FutureLearn partner.A FutureLearn partner is an organization that develops /
creates courses on the FutureLearn platform.
The partner creates all the content of the course, with guidance from the FutureLearnin
concerning the learning design, and then works together to put the course on the platform.
6) The Udemy platform

Udemy is one of the simplest online learning platforms that allows instructors / teachers or
individual trainers to build courses to offer them for free or for payment to the potential
learners (Some courses have over 10,000 students who pay)
Udemy hosts the classes / courses in cloud and the building / loading of the the course on
the platform does not require IT coding knowledge.
Courses are very easy to set up. Most teachers upload a PowerPoint and record a
background voice message with multiple-response questions at the end of each unit of
learning / teaching. You can also upload video, audio, and documents.
Udemy invites anyone to become a lecturer / instructor, and also offers courses to help
people create their own courses and meet quality requirements.
Udemy provides a detailed list of the criteria to be met in order to build a course that can be
published (for example, at least 30 minutes of content, 60% of which must be video, clear
structure, criteria to be met for audio quality and video quality, a free lecture, etc.).
Most courses charge a fee of between $ 9 and $ 99.
An Udemy course must be accessed through the Udemy.com website so that custom
branding options are limited.
A MOOC can not have a custom logo / tag or can not use a custom domain. But Udemy has
2,000,000 registered users on their site and they often do remarkable things to promote new
popular courses.
Udemy offers either paid / for a fee courses and free courses, according to the instructor
demands.
The teacher's allowance (part of the tuition fee) varies depending on who invests in
marketing to attract students to Udemy.
Trainers earn 97% of all tuition fees if the reputation or marketing of the instructor attracts
the student. Udemy retains 50% of its earnings if the student is attracted to the course by the
site's own marketing (udemy.com) or other courses available on the platform, and
The instructor earns only 25% of the tuition fee if a promotional / advertising affiliate to
Udemy attracts the student to / on the site and to take the course. In the latter case, affiliates
earn 50% from the education fee, and the remaining 50% is shared between Udemy and the
instructor.
In 2015, the top 10 instructors achieved total revenues of over $ 17 million.
In April 2013, Udemy offered an app for Apple iOS, allowing students to take courses
directly from the iPhone. The Android version was released in January 2014. Since January
2014, iOS app has been downloaded over 1 million times, and 20% of Udemy users are
accessing their courses via their mobile phone.
An Udemy course offers to the students the opportunity to learn / acquire practical skills
that will help them in their career, hobbies and life. The most captivating / conquering courses
from Udemy use a combination of different styles and teaching formats and include examples,
quizzes and real-world projects.

These courses incorporate the trainer's personality, taught skills, and the structure of the
curriculum / study plan itself.
What are the advantages of publishing a course on the Udemy platform?
As an Udemy instructor, you benefit from the following:

• Free hosting for your video, audio, and other course files
• Dedicated user support for your students / learners.
• Processing payments (if the case) managed by Udemy
• Landing pages optimized for the course
• Mobile access (including mobile phone) for your courses
• Global market for advertising / promoting, communicating and connecting with your students.
It is a good platform for: Instructors / trainers / individual teachers who want to value /
capitalize their courses.
7) Platform MOODLE
Moodle is an "open source" Learning Management System (LMS), which allows users to build
and offer online courses.
It was built rather for traditional online courses than for MOOCs, which attract a large
number of students. This (platform) tends to be easier to install than edX, and single-click
hosting or installation options are available.
Moodle is suitable for organizations that want a fully-featured and customizable Learning
Management System (LMS).
The platform offers more than edX in terms of educational tools, analysis and compliance
with SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model - is a collection of standards and
specifications for computer-assisted training / teaching).
The compromise is that the platform is over 10 years old. The number of configuration
options can be discouraging, and the performance of the system suffers when it comes to a
larger number of students (over 10,000). However Moodle continues to improve everyday and
stays updated for all its users. Thus, in spite some shortcomings, Moodle becomes the most
popular platform for e-learning.
Moodle is a learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners

with a single robust, secure and integrated system to create personalized
learning environments. You can download the software onto your own web server or ask
one of our knowledgeable Moodle Partners to assist you.
Moodle is built by the Moodle project which is led and coordinated by Moodle HQ, which is
financially supported by a network of over 80 Moodle Partner service
companies worldwide.

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment ) is built for learning,
globally having the following remarcable characteristics:
 Proven and trusted worldwide
Powering tens of thousands of learning environments globally, Moodle is trusted by
institutions and organisations large and small, including Shell, London School of Economics,
State University of New York, Microsoft and the Open University. Moodle’s worldwide
numbers of more than 90 million users across both academic and enterprise level usage
makes it the world’s most widely used learning platform.
 Designed to support both teaching and learning

With over 10 years of development guided by social constructionist pedagogy, Moodle
delivers a powerful set of learner-centric tools and collaborative learning environments that
empower both teaching and learning.
 Easy to use
A simple interface, drag-and-drop features, and well-documented resources along with
ongoing usability improvements make Moodle easy to learn and use.
 Free with no licensing fees

Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software, under the GNU General Public License.
Anyone can adapt, extend or modify Moodle for both commercial and non-commercial
projects without any licensing fees and benefit from the cost-efficiencies, flexibility and
other advantages of using Moodle.
 Always up-to-date
The Moodle project’s open-source approach means that Moodle is continually being
reviewed and improved on to suit the current and evolving needs of its users.
 Moodle in your language

Moodle’s multilingual capabilities ensure there are no linguistic limitations to learning
online. The Moodle community has begun translating Moodle into more than 120 languages
(and counting) so users can easily localise their Moodle site, along with plenty of resources,
support and community discussions available in various languages.
 All-in-one learning platform

Moodle provides the most flexible tool-set to support both blended learning and 100%
online courses. Configure Moodle by enabling or disabling core features, and easily integrate
everything needed for a course using its complete range of built-in features, including
external collaborative tools such as forums, wikis, chats and blogs.
 Highly flexible and fully customisable

Because it is open-source, Moodle can be customised in any way and tailored to individual
needs. Its modular set up and interoperable design allows developers to create plugins and
integrate external applications to achieve specific functionalities. Extend what Moodle does
by using freely available plugins and add-ons - the possibilities are endless!
 Scalable to any size

From a few students to millions of users, Moodle can be scaled to support the needs of both
small classes and large organisations. Because of its flexibility and scalability, Moodle has
been adapted for use across education, business, non-profit, government, and community
contexts.
 Robust, secure and private

Committed to safeguarding data security and user privacy, security controls are constantly
being updated and implemented in Moodle development processes and software to protect
against unauthorised access, data loss and misuse. Moodle can be easily deployed on a
private secure cloud or server for complete control.
 Use any time, anywhere, on any device
Moodle is web-based and so can be accessed from anywhere in the world. With a default
mobile-compatible interface and cross-browser compatibility, content on the Moodle
platform is easily accessible and consistent across different web browsers and devices.
 Extensive resources available

Access extensive Moodle documentation and user forums in multiple languages,
free content and courses shared by Moodle users across the world, as well as hundreds
of plugins contributed by a large global community.
 Backed by a strong community

The Moodle project is well-supported by an active international community, a team of
dedicated full-time developers and a network of certified Moodle Partners. Driven by open
collaboration and great community support, the project continues to achieve rapid bug fixes
and improvements, with major new releases every six months. Come moodle with us in our
community forums!
Features:
Moodle has several features that are considered as typically features for an educational
platform plus some original innovations (such as its filtering system). Moodle is very similar
to a learning management system (LMS).
Moodle can be used in many types of environments, for example: in the education, training
and development, in the business environment.

Developers can extend the modular construction of Moodle platform by creating new
plugins that have specific features. Moodle Infrastructure supports many types of plugins:
 activities (including word and number games)

 types of resources
 question types (multiple, true or false, "fill in blank")
 graphic themes
 authentication methods (can request username and password)
 methods of enrollment
 content filters
 Many third-party plug-ins are available for free and use this infrastructure.
Moodle users can use PHP to develop and contribute new modules. The Moodle platform
has been developed by open source software developers. They have contributed to the rapid
development and solving of unforeseen problems.
By default, Moodle includes the TCPDF library, which allows PDF generation.
Some Moodle free web hosting providers allow teachers to create online courses based on
Moodle without the knowledge of installing or using servers.
Some Moodle paid hosting providers offer value-added services such as personalization and
content development.
Note :
Based on our general criteria, described in paragraph 6.1.1 above, MOODLE seems to
be a good selection for hosting our Course (at least from the point of view of the
Roumanian VET partner in the Project)
8) OpenupEd Platform
OpenupEd is a site / platform that provides MOOC courses. It works with the support of the
European Commission, the EAC General Directorate (Education and Culture) within the Erasmus
+ Program.
OpenupEd is one of the world's largest MOOC providers for higher education.
OpenupEd, apart from higher education, is considered to be one of the largest providers of
MOOC courses in the market.

It acts rather as a "dispatcher" that competently directs users / visitors to other MOOC
platforms and educational institutions (with which it has established partnerships) where they
(the users) will find what they are really looking for.
OpenupEd is also a selection filter because it promotes only those MOOCs (and MOOC
platforms) that meet certain quality and performance criteria that this platform has carefully
defined for prospective students first.
Although it is not considered as a top MOOC platform by the authors of the analysis made by
www.reviews.com, the OpenupEd platform can eventually be seen as a cluster of platforms and
institutions offering online education through quality MOOCs where almost everyone (students
and professors developing MOOCs) can find their right place.
OpenupEd has the opportunity to offer MOOCs (and to host MOOCs) in 14 languages.
OpenupEd could be used as a field / exploration area to expand the institution's

(educational institution) online learning facilities.
OpenupEd does not use or advocate for a single MOOC platform for all partners, as most of
them work successfully using their own platforms.
If you are interested in getting / benefiting from a MOOC platform for your own MOOCs,
OpenupEd can offer you more platform options (seen both as software working tools and as
MOOC sites for hosting your MOOCs) depending on language and the pedagogical model of your
MOOC.
Whenever you can contact the OpenupEd Secretariat if you are interested in becoming a
partner and / or looking for a MOOC platform that suits your goals.
Please note that OpenupEd aims to be a distinct quality brand, including a wide range of
(institutional) approaches to open / liberalize education / learning by using MOOCs, rather than
being limited to a single platform (understood in the same time as a software toolkit and a place
for hosting MOOCs), a single model or a single approach, as is usually the case for most MOOC
providers.
As such, OpenupEd adopts / accepts and includes a decentralized model in which the
(education) institutions take command / leadership. Also, they (MOOC's developers)
have control over the types of interactive components embedded in their MOOCs, the
language used, and the possible incorporation of their MOOCs into the curriculum.
Indeed, the diversity of ways in which institutions address MOOCs and Open Learning /
Education is considered an important value in the partnerships established by OpenupEd.
Equity and quality are also valued in these partnerships.
The OpenupEd website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This license allows others to distribute, remix, optimize, and build on this "creation" /
original work (even for commercial purposes) as long as recognition for the "creation" /
original work is ensured. This is among the most accommodating / permissive CC licenses

(Creative Commons) offered and recommended for the dissemination and maximized use of
licensed materials.
The MOOCs offered through this site (OpenupEd) only refer to those courses offered
by OpenupEd partners.
Also, some documents and reports that are referenced may have a separate license for
use. The terms of use and service conditions of these partners apply only to those MOOCs
specified by them.
Framework of common features for OpenupEd MOOCs:
1. Learner-centred
2. Openness to learners
3. Digital openness
4. Independent learning
5. Media-supported interaction
6. Recognition options
7. Quality focus
8. Spectrum of diversity
The OpenupEd partners decided that these features are most relevant for MOOCs in their
contributions to opening up education.
The framework is not meant to be a straitjacket, but to give guidance for improving the
quality of our MOOC offer.
Given that flexibility, some institutions will conform more than others. Partner
institutions, however, should be serious in implementing those features. They need to
outline their process towards opening up education.
It is against this background that OpenupEd offers MOOCs to everybody, in a flexible
way that meets the needs of today’s learners in an increasingly complex world.
OpenupEd apply an international Quality label for our MOOCs tailored to both e-learning
and open education, incorporating these eight features.
Note :
Based on our general criteria, described in paragraph 6.1.1 above, OpenupEd seems to be
another good selection for hosting our Course
9) CourseSites with BLACKBOARD
CourseSites with Blackboard is an extremely robust platform.

It has most of the features Moodle has, including extensive teaching tools, reporting
features and SCORM compliance ((Sharable Content Object Reference Model - is a collection
of standards and specifications for computer-aided instruction).
CoureSites is cloud-based / servers distributed over the Internet, not a local server.
You can set up a course (MOOC) in minutes and do not have to worry about
maintaining or updating it further on.

The service is free for up to five live Courses (5 MOOCs), and Blackboard has given no
indication that this will change.
However the conclusion seems to be that all your courses will be marked with the
Blackboard logo and your students have to register to the Blackboard to enroll in a course.
CourseSites is a good option for individuals - for example, a teacher who wants to move a
part of a curriculum in an online format - or organizations who want to start studying online
without having to install anything.
The maximum of five courses and the inability to tag your course with your own logo are
limitations on how this platform can be applied.
But with the lowest maintenance costs and the highest number of features, CourseSites is a
good option.
Blackboard is an e-Education (Computer Assisted Education) platform designed to

allow educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology. Blackboard
is a Learning Management System (LMS).
10) Canvas (www.instructure.com)

Canvas is an open-source learning management system (LMS), which allows users to build
and offer online courses such as Moodle and CourseSites.
Canvas is a performant Instrument (software tool kit) for online Teaching and it is used by
several universities, including the University of Washington, the Maryland University and the
Utah Educational Network (including Utah University and Utah State University).
In November 2012, this Tool kit also developed a MOOC platform called the Canvas
Network.
Canvas was built using Ruby on Rails as a framework for web applications supported by a
PostgreSQL database.
Canvas includes JQuery, HTML5 and CSS3 to provide a modern user interface.
If you want to use Canvas in your own course or just want to try Canvas out, you do not
have to do all the installation work on your own.
Canvas Cloud is free for teachers, you just must sign up to get started
(www.instructure.com/try-canvas). If you later want to switch from your own installation to
Canvas Cloud or vice versa, you can use the export and import functions to migrate all your
content (https://github.com/instructure/canvas- lms / wiki)
Simply put, Canvas makes teaching and learning easier. It’s intuitive, collaborative, and you
can access it anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Being easy to learn, easy to implement, and radically easy to use makes Canvas that much
easier for teachers to adopt. Simple is what Canvas does better than anyone else.

Features:
 CANVAS DATA
Canvas Data parses and aggregates more than 280 million rows of Canvas usage data
generated daily.
 CANVAS COMMONS
Share more easily, more intuitively, with no compromises.
 AUDIO AND VIDEO MESSAGES

Give better feedback and help students feel more connected with audio and video
messages.
 AUTOMATED TASKS
Manage your course more quickly and more easily with automated tasks.
 BADGES
Customize and award badges for attendance, behavior, and participation.
 CALENDAR
Keep track of important dates and events with the Canvas Calendar.
 CHAT
Chat with other students or teachers in real-time.
 COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACES
Work together seamlessly by using the right technologies in the right ways in Canvas.
 COURSE COPY, MIGRATION, IMPORT/EXPORT

Easily import your courses into Canvas.
 COURSE CREATION
Create courses manually or one at a time.
 CUSTOMIZED NAVIGATION
Canvas intelligently adds course navigation links as teachers create courses.
 DASHBOARD AND ACTIVITY STREAM

See the latest, most relevant course information right when you log in.
 DISCUSSIONS
Help students think deeper about the content they're learning through Discussions.
 EPORTFOLIOS
Create learning-centered ePortfolios that aggregate both new and past work.

 GRAPHIC ANALYTICS AND REPORTING

Turn student performance and usage data into meaningful insights that can inform
instruction and help teachers differentiate when needed.
 GROUPS
Students can share, collaborate, and discuss ideas as part of a Group.
 INTEGRATED MEDIA RECORDER

Record audio and video messages within Canvas.
 LEARNING MASTERY GRADEBOOK

Measure and track student performance and make informed instructional decisions with
the Learning Mastery Gradebook.
 MOBILE ANNOTATION
Open, annotate, and submit assignments directly within the Canvas mobile app.
 MODULES
Stay better organized and direct learning based on prerequisites with Modules.
 NOTIFICATION PREFERENCES
Receive course updates when and where you want - by email, text message, even Twitter or
LinkedIn.
 OUTCOMES
Assess and prepare students to be assessed on standards.
 PAGES
Create wiki-like pages to share content or information.
 PARENT CO-ENROLLMENT
Connect parents to students’ classes automatically—giving them the insight to help their
child(ren) be successful.
 PREVIEW TOOL
Quickly preview documents without downloading or being redirected to another page.
 PROFILES
Introduce yourself to your students or classmates with a Canvas profile.
 QUIZZES

Canvas facilitates online quizzes, exams, and surveys via Quizzes.
 RICH CONTENT EDITOR

Build rich, engaging content through text, images, equations, videos, and more.
 ROLES AND PERMISSIONS

Set role-based permissions.
 RSS SUPPORT
Pull feeds from external sites into courses and push out secure feeds for all course
activities.
 SPEEDGRADER
Grade assignments in half the time.
 STUDENT VIEW
Teachers can preview assignments and other course elements as students see them.
 WEB CONFERENCING
Engage in synchronous online communication.
Note :
Based on our general criteria, described in paragraph 6.1.1 above, such a wealth and
variety of features / functions may make Canvas an important candidate for our
selection
11) Platform Sakai
Sakai is a free platform, a community source, and an educational software designed to

support teaching, research and collaboration.
Such systems are also known as Course Management Systems (CMS), or Learning
Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
Sakai is developed and further upgraded by a community of academic institutions,
trade organizations and individuals.
It is distributed under the community education license (an open source license type).
Sakai is used by hundreds of institutions, especially in the US, but also in Europe, Asia,
Africa and Australia.
Sakai has been designed to be scalable, reliable, interoperable and extensible.
The Sakai software has been installed by over 100,000 users

Sakai provides institutions with all the features of a learning management
system (LMS), enhanced with collaboration and communication resources, in one open-
source, fully customizable platform.
The basic structure and features of the Sakai software have been developed by
members of the higher education community, ensuring that the functionality is specific to
the necessities of these institutions, while maintaining the flexibility for each institution to
configure the software to its individual needs.
Sakai is freely available for direct download and installation, or can be hosted with the
assistance of a third-party affiliate.
Either option allows the unrestricted ability to utilize, distribute, and customize the
software.
As “community-source” software, Sakai has a constant flow of new tools and
innovations developed by users within the Sakai community, which are tested and then
released for use by any institution.
Third-party software also integrates with Sakai, such as student information systems
(SIS) and other tools from commercial affiliates.
This provides an abundance of expandable resources for users to further the
capabilities of the packaged software and create a truly custom experience.
Sakai features a variety of tools designed to enhance instructors’ teaching and sharing
capabilities, from creating lesson plans and posting assignments or quizzes, to maintaining
a gradebook and course syllabus.
Students are able to access these resources and can also utilize features built on
facilitating communication with both instructors and other students, such as discussion
forums and Dropbox file sharing.
Sakai also supports project collaboration between academic researchers or instructors,

making it easy to live chat, track group discussions, share documents, and more.
Sakai offers a wide range of tools to provide both instructors and students with a
collaborative and flexible learning environment, driven by the convenience of modern
technology. A set of standardized tools included in the packaged software are dubbed Core
Tools.
There is also a second category of features, which are created by users within the Sakai
community and are available for anyone to use as expandable resources, and these are
referred to as Contrib Tools.
Among the Core Tools are those that are widely considered “standard” for learning
management systems.
Features include lesson planning and assignment creation, gradebook and syllabus tools,
quiz and testing capability, and ePortfolio management, to name a few.

There are also Core Tools built specifically to assist in communication and collaboration,
such as live chat, discussion forums, Drop Box file sharing, calendars, podcasting, and more.
The list of available Contrib Tools is constantly growing as new features are designed and
added by users on a rolling basis.
Many of the Contrib Tools are simply alternative versions of many Core Tool applications,
such as alternate assignment and gradebook tools. Others include new features to expand the
core abilities, such as blog capability, course evaluations, event registration, and media server
integration.
Sakai’s open-source framework allows for practically limitless resources to be created and
added to expand the packaged software features (Core Tools), accommodating a wide range
of needs.
Many users create tools, called Contrib Tools, as alternatives or enhancements to the
standard features, which go through extensive testing and refinement before being made
publically available for anyone to use.
While there is no license required for the community-derived Contrib Tools, there are a
variety of third-party vendors or commercial affiliates who offer licenses for their selection of
expandable Sakai-compatible tools.
Many of these third-party tools are integrated using the latest IMS LTI v2 standard, for
which Sakai is the first learning management software to fully support.
Sakai is designed for global use and offers accessibility for all users. It is available in over
20 languages to date, with more being added as needs arise.
Language preferences can be changed at the click of a few buttons in the user preferences
section of the software interface.
All tools are tested to adhere to strict accessibility standards before being integrated
into Sakai’s core platform, ensuring it is accessible to the widest group of users possible,
including those who are disabled.
Sakai complies with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A
and AA criteria, and utilizes practices to maintain support for all existing and new adaptive
methods.
Sakai has several deployment options to fit a wide range of needs.
The first option is to download and install Sakai directly, taking on self-setup and utilizing
only the active community for support.
Alternatively, you can download and install the software yourself, but employ a commercial
affiliate to provide any needed support and additional resources.
A third option would be to contract entirely with a commercial affiliate to both host
and support your installation and ongoing maintenance.
Since Sakai requires no licensing or software fees, it can be shared and utilized
with an unlimited number of users across an educational institution. The only financial

obligation incurred would be any hosting or support services that may be needed, as
mentioned before.
Key Features
 Learning management tools

 Project and research collaboration support
 Community of extendable resources
 Support for 20+ languages
 Third-party program integration
 Open-source, customizable software
Sakai provides a comprehensive software package that allows for all teaching and
associated collaborative processes to be managed from one central location.
For project-based needs, built-in work sites can be set up to assist with collaboration for
student groups, faculty teams, academic committees, or other groups needing a centralized
location for planning and sharing.
Useful tools include a common calendar, Drop Box file sharing, and live chat.
Sakai’s open-source design allows for the ultimate customization to fit any research
collaboration needs.
To prevent vendor lock-ins, Sakai adheres with IMS Global Learning Consortium and
additional industry standards.
12) Platform mooc.ro
It is one of the first online platform for courses distributed massively online in
Romanian (language).
This platform has been created to help develop open educational resources and to
provide all people with access to free courses in Romanian (language).
This site is developed and supported by eLearning & Software SRL
It is a platform of courses distributed in the Massive Open Online Courses format.
www.mooc.ro connects: educators, trainers, teachers, didactics and content deevelopers in
a common platform for distributing MOOC courses.
If you want to distribute a course in MOOC format, you must contact platform
administrators at contact@mooc.ro, and they will help you develop your course and
publish it on mooc.ro.
No further information available. It seems the platform is still under construction.

13) Latitude Learning platform
LatitudeLearning is a private software company that provides learning management

software. Based in Saline, Michigan, Latitude Learning developed, hosts and provides
access to a learning management system (LMS), which delivers and manages Web-based e-
learning courses and tracks student progress.
The Latitude Learning LMS includes a software application for the administration,
documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online
events, e-learning programs and training content.
Its products and services are delivered using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) / Cloud
model. The platform offers a free LMS for learning management for up to 100 students.
It is a LMS hosted free of charge. An application form should be sent to the Latitude
Learning platform in order to get started.
The process that ensures the successful implementation of LMS is SurefireSetup ™.
This approach has been created for those who want Latitude to take the lead and
manage LMS implementation from start to finish. Services ”La Carte Services” can be added
as an add-on to SurefireSetup ™. These services are chargeable.
In addition to the standard LMS features such as administration, documentation,
tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning
programs, business intelligence dashboards and training content, the
LatitudeLearning.com LMS offers Web 2.0 capabilities such as:
 integrated functionality ('widgets') to aid in the presentation of personalized
training and performance information;
 RSS news feeds and audio/video casts; blogs;
 polls and surveys;
 and social and peer-to-peer networking forums to provide a consistent
customer service experience.
 Blended learning is also credited with helping global companies with facilities
in many countries to quickly instill a sense of corporate culture and
introduction to new business processes.
Overview of LatitudeLearning Features:
 Training Library
 Partner Onboarding
 Goal-based Training
 Performance-based Training
 Incentivized Training
 Engagement-based Training
 Scorecard Driven Training
 AICC / SCORM Compliant

 Asynchronous Learning
 Live / Video Conferencing
 Internal Training
 External Training
 Synchronous Learning
 Certification Management
 Classroom Management
 Corporate / Business
 Social Learning
 Synchronous Learning
 Testing / Assessments
Latitude Learning helps brands deliver course catalogs, instructor-led training,

eLearning courses, certifications and course subscriptions.
On top of a built-in analytics engine, Latitude Learning also boasts user profiles, user
permissions, stylesheet customization and the ability to operate in multiple languages.
LatitudeLearning provides you with the functionality needed to manage simple, under 100
user training programs or the most sophisticated partner training programs. Our learning
management system supports eLearning, instructor-led training, and self-study courses.
LatitudeLearning's features can be broken down into two categories: Configuration
Tools and Management Tools.
LMS Configuration Tools allow you to adapt the LMS configurations to meet your
needs. LMS Management Tools provide easy functionality to help manage users and their
training.
14) Myicourse Platform (http://myicourse.com/welcome)
MyiCourse is dedicated to removing the financial and technical barriers put in the
way of distance learning.
The platform is open to anyone who wants to create formal and informal courses on
any subject.
Myicourse allows individuals, groups, or companies to create, distribute and
capitalize educational / promotional content on their own websites that can be created.
To encourage and promote the exchange of valuable knowledge, all myicourse core
functions are FREE.
Any site created using myicourse can be "public" or "private".
• A public site is open (accessible), and the site owner can determine what content is
published in a courses catalog.
• A dedicated "private" website allows the creation of content (ie "courses") and the
assignment of "classes" / ”courses” to groups or individuals privately enrolled.
A "Public" college - so may be seen a myicourse public site, which :

• Provides courses available to everyone on the Internet
• Number of FREE courses / Unlimited
• Number of FREE students / unlimited
• Number of FREE visits/ Unlimited course views (viewers)
• If you choose to charge users for courses, please note that 10% are retained.
A "private" college - so maybe seen a myicourse pivat site- which:

Make courses available for a selected group of people
Number of students, rated FREE / Unlimited - only up till 100
Over this number, monthly fees are charged. Also for personalized certificates.
Myicourse.com is an online learning management system which allows user to

create their own sub-domain on Myicourse portal and using this sub-domain they can
create online courses using Myicourse platform.
The platform has simple and usable content creator where user can create courses
using videos, audio, images and test for example if user is a programmer and good in
HTML5 then using Myicourse platform he can create his own online courses and then can
sale them or can share them free with their own audience.
On Myicourse portal user is the owner of their own content.
The portal has two types of online school/college – private and public.
Using public school/college, user can sale their course for free if they are not charging
for that but if they are charging for their courses then they have to enable the payment
gateway on their site which provides by Myicourse and they are using PayPal for now.
For the private site, user can choose their own selected audience, no one can access
their courses without having permission from the college owner side. For example, if you
are the HR person of the company and have some basic norm and procedure which you
want to tell your new employees, using the portal one can create an online course for the all
new employees and can ask them to check them.
They also have affiliate course options which mean one can sale courses on other
myicourse.com sub-domain sites also.
The portal is accessed from all over the world and till now have 10,000 unique
visitor every month, and has around 3000 instructors, 0.15 million user base, 4000 online
School/Colleges and more than 5000 listed courses.
15) The Edevate Platform
Edevate provides open courses online, especially from Udemy, Lynda.com & MIT Open
Courseware platforms.

Once registered with Edevate, the learners / students (undecided / non-orientated in
advance) are encouraged / impelled with appropriate course suggestions related to their
previous educational goals, interests, and experiences while students / learners
(committed) who want to enter a certain qualified profession, may seek courses designed to
prepare them for employment in that field and / or for for a particular employer.
Students / learners also have the opportunity to add the "traditional" graduate classes
and other previous educational experiences to their portfolio (the digital copy of the
personalized portfolio that can be enriched step by step is hosted throughout owners life on
the Edevate platform) , as well as the possibility to acquire academic credits (academic
credentials) by submitting themselves to an examination conducted by the Edevate
partnership with Excelsior College.
All college / academic credits earned through Edevate are approved / confirmed by the
American Education Council for transferring credits to colleges and universities.
Edevate Inc. offers on its site www.edevate.com, on-line massive online courses
(MOOCs) as a dissemination / distribution learning methodology to enable students to build
a single portfolio of lifelong aquired learning and skills.
The company uses the potential of MOOCs and combines them with educational
credentials and training, while providing students with a range of added-value services,
overturning the institution-centered (educational) learning model and bringing up the
MOOCs univers on a platform centered on students no longer dependent on formal
education institutions (no longer required to respect and meet the restrictive conditions
imposed by formal education institutions).
The platform allows customers to create their own personalized student profiles; to
add courses that they just follow and some other already graduated courses to their Edevate
portfolios; to undergo an assessment to obtain certification for qualifications / skills they
master or university credits; and find new courses, evaluate graduated courses and send
their portfolios to colleagues and employers.
Edevate company, through its independent assessment tools, transforms free
MOOCs that do not have assessments for the learning offered by them, in credible
credentials, whether they are digital badges / diplomas, certificates, grades or academic
degrees / grades that can be accumulated and used to obtain higher "prizes" (titles / grades
etc.) through a progressive / stepwise / incremental process of accrediting the
qualifications obtained. Edevate was founded in 2011 and it is headquartered in Atlanta,
Georgia.
Edevate also offers MicroDegree®, a Digital Certificate that certifies that the holder
has completed 1000 routine hours / learning experience in a professional discipline that
includes at least 500 hours of direct contact (face to face education) in accredited
educational programs.

The MicroDegree certificate is not dependent on a particular educational institution,
that is, it can be acquired / obtained by combining the programs offered by many different
institutions, and the MicroDegree Candidate is free to collect / harvest and mix different
types of educational processes.
In addition, Edevate members can attend / participate to a course paying a 3 month
subscription (which is $ 29.95 per month for college) only in the case they enter The
Edevate College Access Program ™ Program.
"Work Tools" and Edevate platform features:

- Over 9,000 free and low-cost courses
- 3 leading MOOC providers (Udemy, Lynda.com & MIT Open Courseware, openEdx)
- Unique personalized profile of student / learner ( can be build by the student /
learner by himself)
- Secured copy on the platform of the Student's Unique Portfolio that includes all the
attended courses (which are in progress) as well as the already graduated courses
(Available all along with learner's lifelong on the learning platform Edevate)
- Assessments to obtain the certification / recognition of his / her qualifications /
skills acquired or to obtain university / college credits
- Student / learner option to evaluate the completed / graduated courses
Certificates:
- Credit / accreditation / certification / diploma that can be obtained by the learner /
candidate through an assessment / evaluating process carried on by the Edevate
Partnership with the Excelsior College.
16) Platform Miríada X
It is a MOOC educational online platform in Spanish and Portuguese.

Miríada X offers the best MOOC courses from the Ibero-American universities and
(education) institutions.
Miriadax courses promote social and collaborative learning, the Miriadax platform
has as a priority the quality training. Miríada X is an online training project of Banco
Santander and Telefoó nica, which has been implemented in the early 2013 through Universia
Network and Telefoó nica Educacioó n Digital. Mirîóada X offers massive online free MOOC
courses suitable for any user interested in their content.
Its success has led it to become an on-line reference training platform not only in
Spain but also in Europe, where more than 40% of MOOCs come from Spanish universities.
In order to enroll into Courses, you need just to register using an email account.
Courses are free and once you've finished them, you can download a free diploma
certifying the student attendance at the course.
Courses that hold this diploma offer the possibility of obtaining a certificate attesting
the successful completion of the course if the conditions for approval are met.

This latest certificate is obtained after paying its cost.
MiríadaX has collaboration with prestigious universities such as the Polytechnic

University of Madrid, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Pompeu Fabra University of
Barcelona, European University, etc.
Another remarkable feature is that there are courses on a wide variety of disciplines:
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Health Sciences, Mathematics, etc.
miríadaX was created in late 2012 with a clear mission: to promote open knowledge in
Higher Education in Ibero-America. A free and open knowledge that is transmitted and
enriched by the network.
miríadaX is available to anyone interested in Massive Open Online Courses for free
through an open unrestricted, unconditional, no cost, no barriers platform.
It is an excellent initiative promoted by Telefoó nica Digital Education -a company

specializing in providing online learning solutions for Education and Training-
and Universia-the largest network of Spanish-and Portuguese speaking universities since
January 2013 in order to encourage the dissemination of open knowledge in the
Iberoamerican space of Higher Education.
MiríadaX numbers are clear: makes available to its users and 1,345 Latin American
universities a space where they can freely transfer knowledge and foster the exchange of
experiences and ideas around common themes.
In this first stage of take-off and consolidation, MiríadaX, with participating

universities, provides a multidisciplinary and general background, offering courses in a
variety of themes, designed so you can follow at your own pace, where you can learn from
scratch about materials that interest you, deepen your understanding or enhance your
skills.
The advancement and progress of MiríadaX is incontestable: in the words of

its top promoter, Pedro Aranzadi, the average number of registered students on their
courses amounts to 7,000 participants, sometimes with peaks of 30,000 students in cases of
courses that have achieved great success and prestige. They have a community of 1,350,000
registered students.
Tools and Features
 70+ courses
 Language: Spanish (mostly), Portuguese

 General platform content: Astronomy | Agricultural Science | Political Science | Health
Sciences | Arts and Humanities | Legal | Technology | Economics | Mathematics |
Languages | Education | Psychology | Sociology and many more!
 Courses totally free
 Sceduled courses (start / end date)
 Discussion Forums
 Multiple choice assessments | Peer to Peer | Hometasks
 Contents of course always accessible and downloadable
 Gamification: offers Badges and Karma (prestige in the community)
Certifications
 Participation Certificates: Certificates of participation are completely free and are

issued automatically when each user exceeds 75% of the course modules. You can
find this certificate within the "My page" in the "My certificates" section.
 Certificates of Accomplishment: Certificates of Accomplishment may be issued for all
courses taught in Myriad X, at the request of the user. Its function is to recognize the
user who obtained the satisfactory completion of 100% of the mandatory activities of
each course. They have a cost (40 € approx.) They are available from the homepage of
each course.
 Certificates of Accomplishment are issued by MirîóadaX and backed by the college
offering the course, featuring the college logo, the teaching team, and a signature. The
certificate also indicates the graduate's position on the course in relation to the rest of
the subscribers.
 Badges (in both cases), downloadable in Mozilla Open Badges
17) The EduOpen platform
It hosts courses for areas of special interest, whether for major disciplines,
professional disciplines or for scientific research issues.
Courses taught / delivered by experts from Italian universities cover a wide range of
areas: from Arts to Mathematics, from Human Sciences to Engineering, from Statistics to
Medical Science.
Some courses grant a certificate. Materials (course materials) and resources can be
downloaded from the site because all resources are published under a Creative Commons
license (4.0 International, Attribution-Noncommercial). These are shareware - provided
they are used for non-commercial purposes and whoever use them must indicate the
original author.
The platform is based on a standard Moodle version, so the EduOpen platform is easy
to use.

To sign up: Go to the platform, sign in (please use your university account if you are a
student or a member of the university staff), browse / check the catalog, choose the course,
register and ... you are ready to get started!
Follow the lectures, collaborate with teachers and colleagues, fulfill your missions.
Check the dashboard for your current courses and get an open digital badge for each
completed course.
The project is funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research.
The partners in the university Consortium share ideas, knowledge, skills, know-how in the
field of educational technologies.
The network promotes creativity and innovation in teaching methods and tools for
teaching. There is a partnership with foreign companies - Moodle of India, GARR, CINECA -
which improves productivity and efficiency.
The EduOpen Access and Certification System consists of four levels:
Level 1 - Enrollment in the course - Free - Payment for special services (eg individual
guidance, offering of master classes / courses, etc.). The aim of the Consortium is to
maintain free access to courses, at least for the first level of certification.
Level 2 - Certificate of participation (EduOpen Certificate + badge (digitaj badge))
- free of charge or delivered after a small contribution (no more than 8 euros plus financial
taxes / charges).
- Contributions are delivered to Edunova, which will bear the cost of certification.
- The evaluation / the assessment is done online
- A badge (digital badge) is given.
Level 3 - Verified Certificate (EduOpen Certificate + Badge(digital badge))

- The costs are due to the costs of the evaluation and issuance of the verified
certificate.
- Contributions for the verified certificate are usually 50 EUR (plus financial costs)
and are equally divided between the University and Edunova; however this (fee) may be less
than or greater than 50 €:
- Tests conducted at the Universities premises or at NICE CINECA centers. For NICE:
the cost is € 25 or € 50 or € 75 depending on the duration of the test (1, 2, 3 hours).
- Badge. (digital badge)
Level 4 - CFU / ECTS Exam (official or joint recognition)

- Official signing up for individual courses at universities.
- Contributions are made at the university (either totally or with a small portion for
Edunova).
- The evaluation is done at the university.

18) Course builder from GOOGLE (and edX).
Course Builder is an Open Source online education platform (Apache 2.0).
It can be used to create your online course, whether it's a university offer, a training
or a corporate product.
It can help you create and deliver online courses, whether for 10 or 1,000,000+
students. It has been used to build, among other things, the online courses: ”Power
Searching” from Google and ”Thinking using the computer” for educators.
Course Builder:
• has a rich set of features;
• It is massive because it works on Google's infrastructure;
• it is completely free (One can apply Google App Engine fees, but it comes always
with a free level / version);
• supports several courses on the same instance;
• Has support for Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
• allows you to keep and hold your data;
• allows you to keep your company's trademark;
• does not require programming to create or run the course:
• It is relatively quick to create the course and run it.
Main features:
 Accessibility
 Analytics and Measurement
 BigQuery
Course Content and Organization
 Creating and Maintaining Student Registration
 Create and Manage Assessments
 Create and Manage Custom Tracks
 Create and Manage Multiple Choice Questions
 Create and Manage Question Groups
 Create and Manage Roles
 Create and Manage Short Answer Questions
 Custom Grading Schemes
 Gradebook
 Import Existing Course Data
 Internationalization
 Learning Tools Interoperability
 Manage Assets and Files from Dashboard
 Manage Course Settings
 Manage Lessons within the Course
 Manage your Courses: Administrators
 Peer Reviewing for Students

 Search
 Secure Access
 Skill Map
 Student Uploads
 System Requirements and Support
With Course Builder, you set up and launch a Course Builder web application configured
for your course or organization.
Then you use your Course Builder web app to create, deliver, and manage one or more
online courses.
A course built with a Course Builder app is made up of familiar instructional elements,
such as units, lessons, assessments, and questions.
You structure a course using these elements and have many options for adding instructional
content.
Your tool for building a course is the Course Builder dashboard .
A Course Builder course is made up of course elements.
 You can manage the composition of your course and its elements in the course
outline.
 You can add content to elements using the content editor, uploading files, and
creating videos.
 You can change course settings to enable other features.
You can use skills, tracks, and labels to organize elements.
You can customize the style of your course by modifying or uploading new CSS,
JavaScript, or template files.
There are different options for customizing these files:
 modify existing default items using dashboard editor
 upload new items in the dashboard
 make local changes on your filesystem and redeploy
After you have finished building a course, students can register and track their progress
and performance as they work through the course content. Students take the course on
the student-facing site.
While students are taking the course, you can use the dashboard to manage your course.
For example, you can make announcements, oversee peer review assessments, manage
a discussion forum, and collect and analyze data to evaluate the course’s effectiveness.
When your course content is ready for students, you can make it available to the public or
some subset of the public.

Course Builder allows you to set the availability of a course as well as the availability
of the elements within a course.
Your Course Builder app runs on Google App Engine.

Google App Engine is service of Google Cloud Platform, so you get Google’s cloud
infrastructure in service of your app, and you can take advantage of other Google APIs. Your
interface with Google Cloud Platform and Google App Engine is Google Developers Console.
Course Builder is written in the Python programming language.

You do not need to know Python to use Course Builder, but you do need to ensure that you
have Python on your machine to run Course Builder.
Most modern computers running Linux or Mac have Python installed already, and our
Windows deployment scripts will install Python automatically.
If it is not installed, you can install Python manually. Be sure to get the 2.7.x version.
Before you can begin building a course, you must prepare a home for your Course Builder
app.
So the next step is to set up a cloud project with a unique ID on Google Cloud Platform.
At this point, you have a machine running Python and a Google Cloud account with one
project. The next step is to download Course Builder.
After deploying Course Builder, you can go to the site on the web and start using
Course Builder.
19) VERSAL (FREE VERSION)
Versal is an intriguing new platform. Its major strengths are a sleek, intuitive user
interface and a robust drag-and-drop functionality.
A user can sign up for free and then build a course that includes mathematical expressions,
image drill-downs and many more widgets, all without any coding knowledge.
Users can also embed their published courses on other websites, such as personal blogs.
Versal can’t fairly be called a MOOC platform, because it lacks certain MOOC
elements. In particular, there is currently no forum or discussion functionality.
Instead, it can be thought of as a strong tutorial platform.
Versal is most suited to individuals who want to quickly build sleek tutorials — for
example, a teacher who builds an assignment for his students, or a musician who builds a
short course on music theory and posts it on his or her blog.
Versal is a young product, and the company is planning to develop some of the
features that its platform currently lacks. This is one to keep an eye on.
Features and Solutions:

 No expert training required to get up and running

 Course authoring
 Customizable interactive assessments
 Direct embed in blogs and websites
 Peer-to-peer training
 SaaS-based (no IT integration or installed software)
 Single-sign on
 Mobile-ready courses
 LTI/SCORM file creation
 Learner management
 Curriculum management
 White label
 Course sales
Administrative features are critical to an eLearning program, and Versal helps you
keep everything organized via a central dashboard.
Manage courses, set access rules and roles, segment groups, and follow learner progress all
in one place.
And if you’d like to create a culture of knowledge sharing across your organization,
set up a peer-to-peer training environment.
Anyone can be designated an author or a learner...or both. Empower teams to teach
and learn from each other, all under your expert oversight and leadership.
20) Skillshare
Like many online learning platforms Skillshare states that they can close the gap
from amateur to professionals for those looking to improve their skills they offer a wide
variety of topics from business acumen to fitness
However where they provide the most value are in creative topics mainly graphic
design photography motion graphics and cinematography why are there so many topics
offered though
Because Skillshare allows anyone to teach a course it's great because you'll have a lot
of topics covered that you wouldn't normally see created and they make it easy to set up a
course with very few guidelines but this comes with a downside the low barrier to entry
means continuity between courses vary. A lot courses can vary in production quality and
teaching delivery and some courses can be as short as 10 minutes and others as long as 6
hours but it's not all bad though.
Skillshare offers the most value in creative topics other topics seem to have less
quality content and less content altogether.

There are courses in HTML, CSS and JavaScript but most of them are short and
introductory. For a web developer seriously looking to improve their skills this may not be
the site for them but a few excellent instructors are on here.
Now this is definitely a huge plus finding solid content from these creators can be
hard to piece together and skill shares put it all in one place.
In addition to single courses skill shares piece together learning tracks to help you
learn topics such as animation digital marketing and raishin.
This has now become common practice for learning sites but it's important to note
that because courses have been simply lumped together rather than truly being tracks to
build upon; It makes them feel more segmented than other platforms.
If you take another track it might be different what a skillshares unique features is
the ability to share projects.
Once you've completed a course you're encouraged to share what you've learned by
uploading your project and sharing it with the Skillshare community
It's interesting to see all the different projects completed. Of course you'll be seeing
more projects in creative courses.
It also provides users the ability to like and comment on your project as well so
there's a social aspect to it. It's not a huge differentiator but it's a nice touch.
Many times someone completed a project with no one to share it with and this is a
great way to address that.
All of the information is organized well and the layout of the website is beautiful and
fully responsive and so is the iPad app
Switching for classes / corses, they are pretty straightforward ypu didn't have any
issues with it.
However using to other parts of Skillshare can be confusing.

Before you take a class / course you'll have to enroll in it to view the entire course.
There is no posibility for just watch the course.
After logging in you'll have to select classes from the top right of your desktop or the
center bottom on the iPad and then you'll be taken to a screen that shows continue watching
or save classes.
When you take a course Skillshare tracks your progress; it will show you how much
you've progressed with a green progress bar at the bottom of the courses thumbnail but it
isn't always accurate. There isn't a way to actually have a show up somewhere on your
profile.
You have to log in to your computer, hover over the Browse button, select track, find
the track that you're looking for and then find the right course that you're looking for.
Within that track at least that's the only way that I could
The profile section acts as a hub that keeps track of everything you're associated with. From
projects courses and rolled and courses you'll be teaching you'll also be able to see all your
classes from here. Platform first offers a plethora of free classes and for the most part
they're good much higher quality than you'd find typically on YouTube.

You can learn a lot for free courses aside from free classes. They offer premium
membership that gives you access to all the courses on Skillshare and they make the
decision to jump up to a premium account easy you get your first month free and that's a lot
of time similar platforms give you about two weeks, so this is a pretty good deal and when it
comes to billing it only comes out to twelve dollars a month.
and feel between courses it's still
21) OpenLearning platform
OpenLearning is a for-profit educational technology institution based in Australia

that offers a social online learning platform that can deliver massive open online
courses (MOOCs).
OpenLearning has worked with the University of New South Wales and Taylor's
University to deliver the first MOOCs in Australia and Malaysia respectively.
In December 2013, OpenLearning launched a cloud based software product for
companies to create private educational portals on its platform.
OpenLearning uses a social media workflow to enable and encourage commenting
and liking, meaning your course will foster a community of collaborative learners instead of
individuals feeling lost in a sea of information.
OpenLearning provides built-in galleries, wikis and blog pages to feature work and
encourage collaboration and peer feedback, while always maintaining room for
individuality.
As an educator, you will be supported by a community of OpenLearning educators
and be provided with training courses and ongoing support to ensure you have the tools to
build the best experiences possible for your students.
OpenLearning enables anyone, anywhere, to build engaging MOOCs that create
interactive and empowering learning experiences.
And the best part? It’s free. No technical skills are necessary, so you can join the online
learning revolution anytime you wish!
Optional OpenLearning offers (with payment) Learning Services.
Learning Services team is made up of experienced Learning Designers, Multimedia
Producers and Graphic Designers. OpenLearning (Learning Services team ) works closely
with university academics and teaching staff to build effective and engaging online courses,
on time and within budget.
OpenLearning expertise centres on designing great student experiences that are
social, active, and engaging. Driven by continuous feedback, OpenLearning collaborative
course design process guides subject matter experts through transitioning their courses
online.
Once course design is complete, OpenLearning provides facilitation training, ongoing
support and recommendations to deliver a world-class student learning experience on
OpenLearning platform.
OpenLearning can help you with:

 A kick-starter package to introduce your team to the OpenLearning Experience and
accelerate your team’s effective use of OpenLearning social learning platform

 Course and qualification development
 Training and support
 Meeting tight delivery timeframes and budgets
OpenLearning Platform Features :
 Student Centred Education

Rich social-media style commenting system allows any page in the course to be a form by
combining content and community.
 Complete Course Delivery
Include activities and assessments, automatically marked quizzes and tests, and group
work, with helpful features such as multiple file submission.
 Third Party Integration
Include Embed SlideShare, Google Docs, Maps, Twitter, DailyMotion, YouTube, Vimeo and
more!
 Strong Community Building
Allows students to create, share and vote on their collective content via a collaborative wiki.
 Detailed Learning Analytics and Statistics
Authentic Assessment Tools

Assign and configure assessor roles within in a class.
 Easy Maintenance
 Advanced Course Administration

Customise the look and feel of a course, including custom banners, backgrounds, and
navigation.
6.2.4 How difficult is to find MOOC platforms from which

to select the most appropriate for hosting our Course
The first time we have set some (more or less relevant) criteria to narrow the search
area for MOOC platforms that might prove appropriate to host our course.
In addition that we had to consider mostly those MOOC platforms hosting courses
with a theme that is at least related to the subject of our course, as well as the platforms
whose audience is somewhat similar to the target audience of learners that our course
focuses, we had to assume that all course materials are already completed and they are just
waiting to be uploaded onto an appropriate MOOC platform.
But above all, we had to assume that the MOOC platforms we like to put in our
selection agree to host our course. It is not like this. Platforms are entitlet to reject our
course proposal if they consider that the course / or the author is not according with their
requirements. If tey do this (and they do) the course materials should be reworked.
By default, it is necessary to modify all the course materials according to the
requirements of the selected desired platforms if we really want to post the course on these
platforms.

Having in view these considerations, we proceded with the analysis (more detailed or
shorter) of the main features of the 21 MOOC platforms after a primary selection out of a
total of 57 listed as the most well known MOOC platforms (according to
https://www.mooclab.club/pages/mooc_comparison_2018/ )
There are available 57 MOOC Platforms from 23 Countries offering 17,000+

Courses which have 100 million+ Users, to a first research of MOOC internet listing in
2018
If we try to investigate, beyond the information available on the internet, each of

these MOOC platforms (many of which may be selectable to host our course), compared to
the set of criteria set out in paragraph 6.1.1 , in order to choose the most appropriate
(platform) of our purpose, a large budget (time and money )would be required.
That is why we have taken as good (and realistic) the statements done by the
platform owners and comments from some users (available on the Internet) about the
features and functions of these platforms.
Since checking their veracity by real testing would have been extremely expensive (in
terms of time and money - because not all platforms are allowed to load a free course for
testing). Testing the veracity of declared platform features would imply loading the course
(if platform administrators accept it) on each platform, and testing the platform's behavior
during the course test run- to see if the criteria we set are accomplished or not.
Finally, the selection of the MOOC platforms that will host our course depends
essentially on the views and choices of the VET partners in the project
Optimistic note: Regardless which platform we choose depends on what
assumptions we make about our course. Most of these platforms offer demos on their site.
It helps to be able to play around in a course and try to imagine our content with a
similar look and feel. Finally, don’t worry about changing our mind early on. These
platforms all rely on much of the same content (YouTube videos, PDFs, quizzes, etc), so it is
easy to migrate a course halfway through the building process.
7. A brief analysis of MOOC
On the INTERNET, there is a wide variety of MOOC platforms that are used for free
or as open-source software.
Some of them also offer the opportunity for trainers to create their own MOOCs
(with the ability to add payments for their services or organizations for which their own
MOOCs are built).
The following table identifies (but is not complete) a number of such MOOC
distributors / platforms.

Tab. 1 Distributors / MOOC Platforms versus some of the chosen criteria.
Legend:
With green color, platforms / distributors that meet most of the criteria listed in point 6.1.1 have been highlighted.
Free-Open Source
Pedagogical style
Platform / Distributor Platform /
No (xMOOC 1 Accreditation
Info, open source Possibility to create
#cMOOC)
courses individually
xMOOC
FutureLearn (Open
NO/ NO (paid option (cMOOC features in some YES (not free)
1. University, UK)
for institutions) cases)
Fix term courses
YES/YES
EdXLagunita/
(mooc.org instructor xMOOC 1 Fix term courses YES (not free)
2. Stanford, MIT & Harvard universities,
option)
USA (openEdX,mooc.org)
xMOOC
Coursera, YES (not free)
3. NO/NO Fix term
Stanford University
Iversity (e-learning
xMOOC YES (not free)
4. provider) NO/NO
Fix term courses
YES (free
Udemy.com (elearning xMOOCs
certification for
5. provider) NO/YES self paced courses2
free courses)
Alison (e-learning xMOOCs

YES (free)
6. provider) NO/YES self paced courses
NO/NO (Only
Education Portal
contracted xMOOCs
=Study.com (by tech YES (free)
7. teachers hired to self paced courses
company)
create lessons)
Platform Myicourse
8. (http://myicourse.com/welcome) Yes/Yes xMOOC Yes not free
Open2Study/class YES/NO (only xMOOCs

YES (free)
9. central, Open Universities canvas3) Self paced courses
Australia (OUA)
YES/NO (free to
COURSEsites/ Open universities, xMOOCs
Education Platform (by schools & prof. Fix term courses and YES (free)
10.
Blackboard) organizations for self paced after the end
MOOC of the course
initiatives)
1
The "x" at xMOOC signifies the "extension" of "classical / traditional course in the classroom. Whether it is an extension to a
larger number of learners who have access to the course materials, or an extension of the content of the taught materials
(more information, more details, more explanations, additional materials, etc.).
2
Own pace courses do not meet a set schedule and are open for 3 to 12 months. Course materials are not available according
to a program, but are fully available as soon as the course starts. Tasks and exams do not have start and end dates or
maturities other than the official end date of the course.
3
Canvas is a cloud-based learning management system.

NO/YES
cMOOCs 4
(educators can
Students can find a partner NO (only
The Mixxer, web service by freely pair the
Individually (self paced), exchange
11. Dickinson College students with
or teachers can pair their confirmation)
another class–
students with an entire class
Skype)
(fix-term)
xMOOCs NO (gradebook or
Open Initiative (OLI)
Fix term and certifications are
Learning, Carnegie
12. NO/YES self paced given if teacher
Mellon University
courses decides that)
Saylor.org, xMOOCs
YES
13. non profit company for NO/NO Fix term
NO/NO xMOOCs
Federica/EMMA, YES (upon
(Institutions can Fix term course and self
Università degli Studi request to course
14. apply to organize paced after course
di Napoli Federico II! organisers)
their MOOCs) (cMOOC features like blog)
YES/YES (only
xMOOCs
for instructors
Miriadax, Telefonica & Self paced YES
15. from universia
Banco Santader courses
network)
xMOOCs
Difundi YES/YES (free to Fix term
YES
16. (openmooc.org) publish a course) courses (no enrollment or
use after the end)
UNED COMA,
xMOOCs
University of Distance
Fix term YES
17. Learning in Spain YES/NO
courses (no enrollment or
UNED (openmooc.org)
use after the end)
FUN: France
xMOOCs NO (possibility
Université Numérique,
Fix term courses (no enrollment for certification
(EdX),
18. YES/NO or use after the and issuance of a
French institutions of
end) diploma in future)
higher education
xMOOCs
YES (only for
iMoox University of Graz & Fix term courses (no enrollment
students of Graz
19. Graz University of Technology YES/NO or use after the
University)
end)
TandemMOOC, Open
cMOOCs
University of Cataluña 19 YES
20. Fix term courses (no
UOC (Moodle) YES/NO
enrollment or use after the end)
MESI MOOCs xMOOCs

YES
21. University of Moscow YES/NO Fix term
(Moodle) courses
4
cMOOCs are based on learning theory called Connectivism which emphasizes the power to connect with other individuals,
to extract knowledge from diverse sources, from diverse opinions, and focus on the ultimate goals as the foundation of
learning.

jmooc portal: 3 platforms gacco,
NO (Except xMOOCs
Open Learning Japan, OUJ MOOC, YES
22. gacco/EdX)/NO Fix term courses
Japan Open Online Education
Promotion Council
MOOEC, not-for-profit
xMOOCs NO
23. International Education NO/NO
Self paced courses
Services Ltd
xMOOCs Self paced courses
YES
24. Eliademy (Moodle) YES/ YES with cMOOC features in
some cases
25. Canvas (www.instructure.com ) Yes/Yes xMOOC No
ucatx.cat (EdX) xMOOC &

YES
26. YES/NO cMOOC
(different providers)
YES/YES (contra
27. Mooc.ro xMOOC YES
cost)
There are also to be further analyzed the following options:

1.
2. http://elearning.centrocot.it/
In the last years, Centrocot has developed its own e-learning tool
(http://elearning.centrocot.it/) for on-line and embedded courses, to support
training with social and multi-media activities.
3. https://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/elearning-
papers

4. Building a MOOC Platorm / an e-learning platform on the Project website
http://www.ecosign-project.eu
The final goal:
The course will be available after the project in at least in 5 different MOOC platforms
in at least 5 different languages (English included). Moreover, they will be linked to other
European MOOC dissemination portals (e.g. http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu )
8. MOOC platform environment

The operating environment of a MOOC platform can be described in four levels:
1. Server environment and computer software tools.
2. Technical support around the platform.
3. The central platform for pedagogical learning support, working closely with software
specialists in the same organization.
4. Local educational support within each university / organization to help teachers produce
and hold courses.
Needs and requirements for MOOC production and running:

1. A MOOC course needs a virtual cloud platform. This is the only way to withstand changes
in student load at a reasonable cost, depending on the number of users connected at the
same time, in a larger number at the beginning or depending by day and time. Otherwise,
additional servers should be ready to take over the peak load, and this is very expensive.
2. A MOOC platform requires IT staff to ensure good operation. Managed in the cloud, these
virtual platforms will minimize the number of IT specialists required. The role of IT staff is
not only to ensure the conditions for good operation, but also to open virtual sessions for
each course (one course = one session).
3. There is a need for pedagogical support staff to work with software specialists, to train
and advise the trainers in each training provider / university. The exchange between these
people should help IT specialists in the field of computers adapt the platforms to the needs
of teachers and students. This level must interact remotely with universities and train local
trainers.

4. In each training organization / university, ICT specialists (design instructors, shooting
and media staff) are needed to support teachers.
American consortia (Coursera, edX, ...) offer points 1 and 2 and point 3 until complete
realization of MOOC (on platform), for a fee, but for a price of up to $ 250,000!
Given the youth of the MOOC phenomenon, it is unclear how it develops and how it will
affect the creation of MOOCs, the institutional budgets, although there are some initial
assessments available. There appears to be a considerable variation in the financial
investment required to produce and deliver the MOOC, both in terms of total costs and in
terms of the price per certificate paid by the student completing the course.
9. Platform chosen by the CSFPM and EcoEvalind

partners in Romania
Having in view the above considerations, the CSFPM has negotiated with the representatives
of the MOODLE platform in Romania, eLearning & Software (which also support the
mooc.ro platform),
(Note their address: www.elearningsoftware.ro )
for the services necessary for testing and launching the ECO-DESIGN course (realized in the
ECOSIGN project) in Romanian (language).
VET provider ECOEVALIND jointly with CSFPN opted for the SIMPLIFIED platform,
available at: www.simplified.ro
which offers, based on an annual subscription, the entire package of services:

 platform,
 hosting,
 maintenance.
Simplified is a unique, mobile-friendly system fully compatible with smartphone, tablet -
easy to use, supported by a multidisciplinary team - programmers, instructional designers,
trainers.
The main fuctions and features of the platform / system are:
Functions:
 Communicate  Create reports
 Share  reward
 Evaluate  Interacts with
 Certify Gamification
Features:
 Forum and Chat
 Activity completion
 Badges
 Progress bar
 Leader board
The course (Ecodesigner) will take place in a format, "self paced courses"
For the Course uploading and running on the Platform, there are provided by the
Platform administrator the following main features and facilities:
 Bookstore
 News
 Reports (logs and other customized reports)
 User Management (import, new user,
role management)
 Page settings
 Calendar
 Landing page with the option for online
courses catalog
 banners
 Payment online
 arranging the courses in any custimized order
 User groups
 Feedback and Rating
 evaluation
 Certification

Services provided on the platform:
• Hosting
• Maintenance
• Upgrade to the latest software version
• Support (24/7)
• 25GB of storage space
• Implementation training
• No installation costs
Partitions have been opened in the following languages:

 Romanian,
 Spanish,
 Italian,
 Slovenian and
 English.
To save space, resources greater than 50 MB will be hosted outside the platform (eg in
GOOGLE DRIVE), and the platform will be linked to them in the URL format.
The CSFPM and ECOEVALIND partners plan to use this platform in the future after the
project is completed.
Your own web page on the platform can be accessed at: https://ecodesign.simplified.ro/
Username and password have been previously shared.

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D4.

1 – Report of MOOC platforms

Eco-Innovation Skills for European Designers

Deliverable D4.1 Report of MOOC platforms - DRAFT 2

Lead Beneficiary: CSFPM (Romania)

Confidential, only for members of the

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA

Project Start Date: 01/11/2015

Table of track changes

Version Date Changes

CSFPM Elena Laslu

ECOEVALIND Gheorghe Bucataru

Gabriel Mihail Laslu

Ana Maria Albu

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 2 of 67

3. Roles and responsibilities …………………………………………………………………...……………………………….6

4. Criteria for choosing the platforms on wich

are to be hosted the ECOSIGN MOOC courses ……………………………………………………….……..……….7

5. Extending MOOC in Education ……………………………………………………………………………………………...8

6. Brief overview of MOOC providers / platforms …………………………………………………………..……..14

6.1 Platform requirements………………………………………………………………………………….….14

6.1.1 Criteria for selecting a platform for our MOOC……………………………………………...………...14

6.1.2 How to use criteria in selecting the Platform(s)............................................................................. 21

6.1.3 Selecting a MOOC provider / MOOC platform ends.......................................................................23

6.2 MOOC providers /vendors / platforms……………………………………...…..…………………….24

6.2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of hosting the MOOC course.................................................25

6.2.2 Considerations on fees applied by MOOC platforms………………………………………………..26

6.2.3 Overview of the most Known MOOC Platforms available.........................................................28

6.2.4 How difficult is to find MOOC platforms........................................................................................... 60

7. A brief analysis of MOOC …………………………………………….………………………………………………………61

8. MOOC Environment ……………………………………………..……………………………………………………………..65

9. Platform chosen by the CSFPM and ECOEVALIND partners in Romania …….……………………..66

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 3 of 67

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 4 of 67

VET provider for each country will perform this task.

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 5 of 67

- Students / learners (industrial design / industrial engineering and similar) or unemployed

- Designers / planners from a particular sector interested in accessing a different sector

3. Roles and responsibilities

WP4 Training Course Delivery CSFPM

T4.1 Analyze MOOC platforms CENTROCOT/CETEM/ECOEVALIND/MARIBOR

T4.2 Delivering Course in selected

T4.3 OER protection CETEM

T4.4 Harmonize and validate the

T4.5 Validation and recognition plan. CSFPM/SEF/SICEV/CPI

• designers of goods / electronic / electrical products

• designers and workers for food packaging

• Designers / planners from a particular sector interested in accessing a different sector

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 6 of 67

4. Criteria for choosing the platforms on wich

- Finding MOOC providers / platforms that individual trainers or organizations (profit or

- Recognition (certification) of the course completion - this criterion differentiates platforms

- Provide the possibility to issue a certificate of graduation.

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 7 of 67

5. Extending MOOC in Education

From universities' replies, it is found that the percentage of students enrolled in

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 8 of 67

Table 2 Characteristics of various types of MOOC

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 9 of 67

According to https://www.class-central.com/languages , the language in which the courses

 Does the platform offer verified certificates?

 How many learning pathways or specializations are offered?

 How many accredited degrees can be earned?

Project Number: 562573-EPP-1-2015-1-SI-EPPKA2-SSA Page 10 of 67