Massive Open Online Course on Biobased Materials produced by nine partners successfully finished
Last week the partners of the BIG-Cluster project CROSSBEE – Cross-border Bio-Economy Education – met for a final project meeting to evaluate the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ever produced by a consortium of nine partners.
The partners from the Belgium region of Flanders, the Netherlands and the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia committed themselves to the production of a joint MOOC which aims at spreading knowledge about the bioeconomy, bio-based production processes and respective real-life examples into the world, thus educating young people and fostering awareness for a sustainable economy. The project officially kicked-off in April 2018 at the Technical University of Delft and the MOOC was built under the coordination of BE-Basic and CLIB. Universities and companies from the whole BIG-Cluster region bundled their expertise in different disciplines to generate a broad learning basis.
From January to March 2019 the MOOC was open for 7 weeks on the free online platform edX.org and attracted more than 1800 learners from all continents worldwide. Activity in the MOOC was very high and learners rated the experience with more than 8 out of 10 points.
In April 2019 the consortium met for concluding meeting in Duesseldorf and evaluated the project and the MOOC itself. All partners agreed on opening the course for an additional self-paced run from June 2019 to January 2020 to educate even more students and young professionals from all over the world. Additionally all course material will be open for free usage in blended learning or other learning activities.
More information on the re-run and open material can be found on the edX platform will be published by the partners in the coming weeks.
The BIG-Cluster Initiative – formed by ten clusters and networks from the Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium) and North-Rhine Westphalia (Germany) – aims at fostering the bioeconomy in the project region.
CROSSBEE is promoting sustainable economy thinking and entrepreneurship among students and young professionals and thus educating the bioeconomy experts of tomorrow. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
More information can be found on https://www.bigc-initiative.eu/.