In this extensive framework, some institutions pursue the original goal of these massive courses, which is to make education accessible to the maximum number of human beings, wherever they are. However, many others aspire to achieve other legitimate targets beyond the simple idea of being on the crest of the wave based on business models.

While everyone knows what a MOOC is, and one can distinguish between different types of massive courses, there are some open issues that have not yet been answered. Although more time is needed to evaluate the quality of learning in a MOOC framework, this quality does not seem to be one of the main concerns of the promoters and developers of these massive courses nowadays. 

So what indicates a MOOC’s success? Is it high enrolment, a low percentage of dropouts, the number of active participants, investment close to zero, broad geographical scope, high interaction showing participants involvement, good peer-review comments, the prestige of the authors and institutions involved, the participation of developing countries…?

These and other unanswered questions lead to the crucial point for any educational activity: learning. Are MOOCs really providing significant learning? To what extent do these courses make personal knowledge richer and more cognitively complex? What evidence do we have on short, medium, and long-term results?

Learning assessment has at least two sides: the pedagogical one that attempts to help students to learn and the social one that responds to society about the legitimacy and validity of the learning. Both are inseparable and important, and they have both been neglected by MOOCs promoted so far.

To provide in-depth answers to the challenges mentioned above, this special issue will accept papers that tackle the following topics and those that can show direct evidence of learning and can provide a transferable accreditation system for MOOCs participants:

• Alternative assessment methods for MOOCs
• Successful peer-review systems in massive online courses
• Formative and summative feedback in massive online courses
• Effective official recognition mechanisms of participation in MOOCs
• Incentives and rewards to avoid drop outs in MOOCs
• Role and type of badges in MOOCs associated with learning activities and different approaches of learning
• Theoretical and methodological approaches exploring the most suitable assessment mechanisms in MOOCs
• Learning accreditation in massive courses
• Role of instant feedback in massive courses.
• Affordances and limitations in MOOCs assessment schemes
• Transferability of MOOCs credits to formal education. 

Papers will be accepted in both English and Spanish and will be published in their original language.

Deadlines

01 December 2013: deadline to submit abstracts (up to 1000 words)

01 January 2014: communication of preliminary acceptance of abstracts

01 March 2014: deadline to submit full papers

01 June 2014: expected date of publication

Author Guidelines

The criteria to be considered when selecting articles are

• the paper’s empirical or theoretical research basis
• a combination of theoretical and methodological approaches that reflects global, systemic, and interdisciplinary knowledge
• the clarity of the results and conclusions. 

Coordination: Elena Barberà (UOC’s eLearn Center)

The papers must be original and must not have been published previously. The submission file must be in English or Spanish and sent in Microsoft Word (or equivalent) .

The articles must follow the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

The articles selected will be subject to a blind review carried out by a group of experts.

Abstracts should be sent to: der@greav.net