The first nine courses have been made available online on 21 April by EduOpen, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform developed by a consortium of 14 universities across Italy and the country’s Ministry of Education. EduOpen is built on Moodle, an open source software learning management system.
The platform aims to soon host some 68 courses online, including several in English. Students that complete courses will receive attendance certificates, students that pass exams and pay enrolment fees can get university credits or earn a university qualification.
According to a message on Twitter, EduOpen registered a 1000 students on its first day. One month later, the number of students had grown to over 8000, reported newsaper La Republica,
New and old school
Developers working on EduOpen have built add-ons to extend Moodle functionality, and to allow online courses to be combined with traditional classroom teaching. “A major goal was to not create a fork”, the project writes on its web site. “However, the standard release of Moodle is not particularly suited to deliver MOOCs or blended courses.”
Examples of functionalities developed for EduOpen include tools to manage payments, improved searching for courses and a dashboard to show students activities and achievements.