This paper reports the insights of the experience of designing and deploying the MOOC Digital Education of the Future, which was deployed in the platform MiríadaX in early 2013. This MOOC was delivered by several professors from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and was supported by several external social tools that promoted the creation of a community of learners as part of it. The contribution of this study is a list of insights and recommendations about both the design and deployment of MOOCs. These insights and recommendations are built upon those presented in previous works by the authors. The design recommendations include information about the overall course structure, the assessment activities, the certification of the course, and the use of complementary social tools. The deployment recommendations mainly focus on the role of the teaching staff when running the course and on the importance of social tools and communication tools as a mechanism for participant engagement throughout the course. These recommendations aim to be useful for other practitioners, instructional designers and policy makers addressing the challenge of designing and deploying a MOOC from scratch.

Keywords

deployment · design · insights ·  · recommendations · social tools. distance learning