Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as provision of open and online education have become phenomena in higher education that cannot be dismissed. While MOOCs have orginated in Canada and the United States, the cMOOC and the xMOOC model used there does not fit entirely with the European take on education. This chapter describes an alternative, collaborative approach of MOOC design. This approach is based on a model already tested in practice and has been further elaborated and evaluated in the Elearning, Communication and Open-data (ECO) project. The pedagogical framework is based on the notion that MOOCs should be designed to accommodate the specific context of open online education with its heterogeneity of learner needs. It differs very much from a traditional classroom approach and needs to put the learner center-stage in a social networked learning environment. The characteristics of such a pedagogical framework are described and it is explained how digital inclusion, ubiquitous learning, and gamification can provide affordances for active participation of learners that meet the learners’ needs. Examples are given of implementation of these aspects in ECO MOOCs and initial reports of user evaluations indicate that learners liked this approach.

Keywords

collaborative learning · connectivist learning · European MOOC design · open online education · pedagogical design · sMOOC · social learning