Austria's only MOOC platform iMooX.at is being expanded to become the central online learning service offered at all Austrian universities. The current relaunch administrated by TU Graz and Uni Wien results in the creation of an innovative educational platform of international calibre for freely accessible and openly licensed online courses offered at all Austrian higher education institutions.

MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses are freely available online courses on diverse topics, including STEM subjects, medicine, law, and sociology. The original idea to offer these free online courses that enables students to learn together via the Internet was developed in the USA; by now, these courses have been enriching digital learning and teaching worldwide for a decade. Back in 2013, TU Graz and the University of Graz launched iMooX.at, Austria's first and to date only MOOC platform. Offering over 200 courses, reaching 60,000 students, and involving more than 90 national and international partners, iMooX serves as the central contact point for digital learning both in Austria and beyond its borders.

iMooX is a member of the European MOOC Consortium and part of the MOOChub (https://moochub.org), where all German-language MOOC platforms are listed.

The abbreviation MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, i.e. a free, potentially openly licensed online course that can be taken by many people. Scientifically, most people now accept that the Dunbar number (150) is used to assess whether a course can be described as "massive". This number marks the threshold up to which a single person is considered to be able to maintain social relationships with other people.

2012 was declared the "Year of the MOOC" after, beginning in the USA, more and more teachers began to offer so-called MOOCs, and similar platforms such as Udacity, Coursera, and edX were founded. The original idea was to offer online courses free of charge to many students so that they could learn together and via the Internet. While the first courses usually still featured lots of mutual online discourse, other teachers, including Sebastian Thrun, also discovered this teaching possibility for themselves. When more than 100,000 people registered for these courses, MOOCs were finally recognised as a new phenomenon in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning.

Goal - all of Austria learns online

As part of the digitalisation offensive established by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), iMooX.at is now being developed into Austria's central learning hub. The MOOC platform enables all universities to offer their teaching content from all disciplines to large national and international audiences.

Martin Ebner, Head of the Educational Technology Service Point at TU Graz and the mastermind behind iMooX.at defines the goal of this project as follows: "The planned relaunch of our MOOC platform presented today shows how we are laying the technical, organisational, logistical, and media educational foundation for all Austrian universities, indicating that they will soon be able to offer any number of MOOCs on the platform. Our goal is to provide a central educational platform within the Austrian educational landscape that offers freely accessible and openly licensed online courses."

The target group is not exclusively students, but all interested parties - in short, all members of society.

Milestones

The development phases of the iMooX project will be briefly outlined below:

• 013 Foundation of the platform iMooX.at by the University of Graz and TU Graz
• 2014 iMooX.at receives the sponsorship of UNESCO
• 2015 the first course held as a MOOC is offered with support from TU Graz
• 2015 the MOOC "Free Online Learning" receives the Austrian State Prize for Adult Education
• 2017 the first major technical transition takes place
• 2018 the largest MOOC on the platform on the topic of the GDPR is launched with more than 10,000 participants; content is provided by the University of Vienna
• In 2019, in addition to the MINT MOOCs, TU Graz also offers the first FIT courses for first-year students in the subjects of mathematics and computer science
• In 2019, the University of Vienna offers its first MOOC on iMooX.at with the course title "Dismantling Prejudices and Nationalism" by Univ.-Prof. Oliver Rathkolb
• In 2019, the University of Vienna offers its first MOOC on iMooX.at with the course title "Dismantling Prejudices and Nationalism" by Univ.-Prof. Oliver Rathkolb
• 2020 the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research funds iMooX.at and sets the goal that the platform will be made available to all Austrian universities
• 2020 moochub.org is significantly expanded and the courses of iMooX.at are listed there
• 2021 another major graphical and technical update occurs

Results

Unlike on other platforms, the content of all courses is openly licensed on iMooX.at as open educational resources (OERs). This means that they can be used without any copyright restrictions.

iMooX.at is GDPR-compliant and offers the "eduID" as a means of authentication. This means that students and teachers from Austrian universities do not have to register, but only need to use the authentication data of their university as a login.

All learning videos are also published on YouTube, and most of them are subtitled to ensure easy accessibility.

With the 2021 relaunch, iMooX.at is designed for learning on and with mobile devices under the catchphrase "mobile first”.

The landing pages of the respective education partners list the online courses offered by this institution.

Future developments

Apps for iOS and Android are also planned for development in the future, which can be used as a study diary. In addition, depending on the course booked, deadlines are displayed which are connected to reminders and allow you to recording your study progress and notes. Another development is the push notifications, which, e.g. tell users when the MOOCs will start.

The University of Vienna will launch two MOOCs on January 27, 2021, in the subject areas of "Legally Safe Publishing" and "Legally Safe Research." TU Graz will then offer MOOCs on the topics of digital skills for students and everyday business life.

By the end of 2021, learning analytics applications will be made available for teachers and, if applicable, for students so that they can assess learning with MOOCs more effectively. In addition, further features will be developed and implemented with the cooperation partners, including at the annual MOOC Summit.

Other topics of potential interest

Massive Open Online Courses, so-called MOOCs, are freely available online courses that are offered on various topics. TU Graz has been operating an established MOOC platform, iMooX, since 2013. The platform’s technology, structure, logistics, and media education offers will now be expanded together with the University of Vienna as part of the project "iMooX - Die MOOC-Plattform als Service für alle österreichischen Universitäten" [iMooX - The MOOC platform as a service for all Austrian universities] such that all Austrian universities will be able to offer as many MOOCs as they would like by using the platform in the near future. The goal is to provide a central educational platform within the Austrian educational landscape that offers freely accessible and openly licensed online courses.

"iMooX as a Service" represents the core of the project for other higher education institutions. Teachers and students will benefit from the offers on iMooX. All content on the platform is designated as open educational resources (OER), and its use in all teaching and learning situations is thus guaranteed. By offering all Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) via this platform, the visibility of Austria's digital higher education landscape is increased, facilitating international partnerships.