The report has become a yearly marker that provides insights, inspires new thinking and sparks conversations on the future of learning and the role we have as universities in society. Our MOOC faces this problem but it also advantageously benefits from the competences that today’s young researchers generally have (new technologies, social networks, multilingualism) and offers them an opportunity to pursue a teaching and research career and to make new contacts with professors from other European universities in a moment in which their affiliation to a university cannot be taken for granted. A hotly debated topic is whether European universities are able to compete with the MOOCs offered by North-American institutions, which are often the results of huge investments (Ruth, 2014). It is being created by a group of interdisciplinary and interuniversity lecturers and a team of organizers that is intended to be self-sufficient in order to create a brand new MOOC with a non-existent budget. The MOOC ‘Magic in the Middle Ages’, organized by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) with the collaboration of the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), is an unconventional course even for an e-learning platform. This paper aims to stimulate discussion of the potential for new educational technologies to ensure social inclusion for virtual and physical vulnerable learner groups. The challenges and options for future online education initiatives are based on insights and ideas of international scholars and researchers reflecting on potential barriers for learners and online education. Practical answers to contemporary, ICT-supported educational challenges are provided as options to fuel the debate. The current dichotomy of xMOOC and cMOOC are used to mark some of the unexplored MOOC territory. In order to align the future conceptualization of MOOCs with the vision and philosophy of Europe, potential tensions of contemporary and future education are listed. This exploratory paper picks up elements from the European Commission’s educational vision and philosophy behind Opening up Education, the resulting initiative of the MOOC platform, and takes this as a starting point to look at potential challenges for developing MOOCs that include vulnerable learner groups.
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