The first EMMA MOOCs will go live in September 2014 and are provided by universities in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the UK on subjects as diverse as business management, social innovation and cultural heritage, climate change, and searching on the internet.

Announcing the launch of EMMA, the project coordinator, Rosanna De Rosa, said, “EMMA provides an exciting opportunity for both students and MOOC providers in Europe to benefit from a simple user-friendly platform that provides unique multilingual access to MOOCs. We are looking forward to rolling out this service in the coming six months”.

EMMA will operate in two main modes: as an aggregator and hosting system of courses produced by European universities and as a system that enables learners to construct their own learning paths using units from MOOCs as building blocks. Once operational, EMMA will be open for other providers who wish to make their MOOCs available in multiple languages and across borders.

Pilots will run in seven countries, with a total of sixteen MOOCs and will involve at least 60,000 participants.

EMMA is a thirty-month pilot action supported by the European Union. EMMA will showcase excellence in innovative teaching methodologies and learning approaches and will offer free, open, online courses in multiple languages from different European universities to help preserve Europe’s rich cultural, educational, and linguistic heritage and to promote cross-cultural and multilingual learning.

The EMMA partners include the following institutions and organizations: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy (Contractor); Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain; Open Universiteit Nederland, Netherlands;; Universidade Aberta, Portugal; University of Leicester, United Kingdom; Université de Bourgogne, France; Tallinn University, Estonia; Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain; CSP - Innovazione Nelle ICT S.C.A.R.L., Italy; ATOS, Spain; IPSOS srl, Italy; and ATiT, Belgium.