MOOC Research and Innovation

Recently, Tsinghua University and Google collaborated to host the 2014 APAC MOOC Focused Faculty Workshop in Shanghai, China. The workshop brought together 37 professors from 12 countries in APAC, NA and EMEA to share, brainstorm and generate important topics that are of mutual interests in the research behind MOOCs and how to foster MOOC innovation.

During the 2-day workshop, faculty and Googlers shared lessons learned and best practices for the following focus areas:

• Effectiveness of hybrid learning models.
• Topics in adaptive learning and how they can tailor to individual students by Integrating MOOCs into a student's timetable / semester / curriculum.
• Standards and practices for interoperability between online learning platforms.
• Current focuses and important topics for future MOOC research.

In addition to discussing these focus areas, here was ample time for participants to brainstorm and discuss innovative research ideas for the next-steps in potential research collaboration. Emerging from these discussions were the following themes identified as important future research topics:

• Adding new interactions to MOOCs including social and gamification
• Building a data & analytics Infrastructure that provides a foundation for personalized learning
• Interoperability across platforms, and providing access to online content for audiences with limited access.

Google is committed to supporting research and innovation in online learning at scale, through both grants and our open source Course Builder platform, and we are excited to pursue potential research collaborations with partner universities to move forward on the topics discussed. Stay tuned for future announcements on research and collaboration aimed at enabling further MOOC innovation.