Massive Open Online courses eNhancing LInguistic and Transversal skills for social inclusion and Employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Massive Open Online courses eNhancing LInguistic and Transversal skills for social inclusion and Employability

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Integration of refugees; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

MOONLITE has explored the way in which open education, in the shape of MOOCs, can be used to support the social inclusion of refugees and migrants in terms of their access to higher education and the employment market. Specifically, the general objectives of the MOONLITE project were to boost the use of MOOCs to A) Widen and improve the HEIs teaching for registered HEI students, B) Create new educational pathways for refugees, and C) Build entrepreneurial and language skills among those two groups.

The achievements of the project can be divided into two groups, those promised in the proposal as outputs and additional ones included in other sections of the proposal or achieved as the project advanced. Regarding the former, all the projects Outputs were delivered as promised and are available on the project’s website. Regarding the latter, the following details can be provided:

1. More than 100 representatives of refugee stakeholders were contacted by the partners.
2. In total around 4895 people were beneficiaries of the work in this project. This figure comes from the number of refugees and migrants who have participated in the MOOCs developed in the project, the attendees of the webinars, the online and face-to-face workshops and events, etc.
3. Four institutional workshops were run to highlight the issues covered in this project: LNU reached 11 participants in their institutional workshops, UNED 40 in their two workshops, UW reached 10 participants, and ESCP 5.
4. A total of 407 people participated in online vision-building events. These two events took the form of an Oxford style event with 340 people (who participated 6253 times) and a mixed face-to-face and online event with 67 people.
5. A total of 310 people were reached regarding MOOC policy issues. Directly, there were 14 people interviewed, and indirectly, as part of the contacts and discussions held in a range of different meetings and events, there were an additional 296 people.
6. The openly accessible learning resources in the MOOCs in the project MOOCs were accessed more than 5000 times.

Regarding the project’s contribution to academic research (information can be found on the project’s website):

– 23 presentations were given at national and international conferences.
– 10 workshops were run at conferences or relevant events.
– 7 journal and book chapter publications have been produced.

Other publications are in still in process.

Some results exceeded the initial expectations of the partners in the project, especially in bringing together stakeholders, academics, academic staff, NGO’s and refugees from around the world. For example:

1. The project provided an online Oxford-style debate on the topic of how MOOCs can enhance the cross-institutional collaboration and European policies necessary to support refugee HE and employment.
2. Webinars were undertaken that were designed for interactively. Seven webinars drew the attention of approximately 270 participants and the recordings more than 600.
3. The project’s Facebook group, MOOCs 4 Social Inclusion & Employability (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1836694569953327), has proven to be a springboard for exchange of ideas and projects. It has been very active, with 74 different posts by 11 different authors. These posts have been shared 19 times, reacted to 229 times and commented on 13 times. The group currently has increased from 169 to 203 members in the last 4 months and will remain active even now the project has finished.
4. The Spanish project partner organized two very successful face-to-face institutional meetings with nearly 20 participants from NGOs, associations, and refugee support groups.
5. The Spanish partner also developed and ran two Language MOOCs for refugees and displaced people, to help them with their immediate needs in Spain with Spanish. These courses reached 2252 and 1233 people respectively (a total of 3485).

The project website (https://moonliteproject.eu) received 7247 unique visitors, 11595 visits and 198,898 page-views.

Other dissemination activities include: the preparation of a biannual newsletter for Spanish refugee support groups, the recording of a radio programme at UNED about the project and the UNED scenario with Spanish refugee support groups, the inclusion in the EADTU Newsletter of news above the project, the undertaking of an interview with MOONLITE’s coordinator by UNED’s Communication Team, the preparation of a news story about one of the MOOCs developed at UNED for the project, and the recording of an interview by the Spanish radio station “Cadena Ser” with a member of the UNED team on the Language MOOCs developed for refugees and migrants.

Other publicity about these LMOOCs appeared in the Spain press and different educational blogs.

Regarding sustainability, all the content, outputs, MOOCs, webinars, etc., will remain available for the foreseeable future via the project and the partners’ websites and UNED’s MOOC platform.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 324232 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACION A DISTANCIA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Web2Learn
• VERENIGING VAN EUROPEAN DISTANCE TEACHING UNIVERSITIES
• KNOWLEDGE INNOVATION CENTRE (MALTA) LTD
• UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON
• LINNEUNIVERSITETET
• ESCP EUROPE WIRTSCHAFTSHOCHSCHULE BERLIN EV