This year, the IEEE conference Learning with MOOCs (LWMOOCs) will be hosted at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on October 11–13. This marks a return to origins for the event: its first edition took place at MIT, back in 2014.

The conference, which primarily focuses on massive open online courses, welcomes submissions from a broad range of participants, including researchers, educators, decision-makers, and practitioners.

In 2023, besides its usual themes centered around MOOCs, the event is formally broadening its scope to encompass blended learning and open education at large. Furthermore, this edition is particularly interested in contributions that seek to refine the notion of “success” within the context of open-education projects.

Registrations will open soon; the call for papers is already available here. The deadline for submitting an abstract is April 3rd, while full papers are due a month later. Get your submissions ready!

Conference Program

Since the conference is half a year away, the detailed conference program and speaker list haven’t been released yet. But having taken part in several past editions, the event usually features a balance of short- and long-form talks from experts. This edition will be no exception. The three-day program will include:

• Keynotes, by leading experts — the occasion for deep dives into specific topics.
• Full paper presentations, exploring at length comprehensive submissions.
• Lightning rounds, with authors taking turns, concisely presenting their work.
• Workshops, taking a hands-on, interactive approach to the subject at hand.
• Poster sessions, facilitating one-on-one discussion with paper authors.

In addition, you can expect the conference to offer optional social activities — opportunities for networking, collaboration, less formal communication, and perhaps, for discovering the city of Cambridge and all it has to offer.

You can find more details on the conference program here.

Call for Papers

The conference welcomes submissions on a wide variety of topics pertaining to MOOCs — spanning MOOC development, delivery, and analytics — as well as blended learning, and open education initiatives.

Specific topics of interest include:

• Free or affordable degrees, including MOOC-based programs
• The role and potential of MOOCs in the professional world
• Inclusivity and accessibility in open education
• International cooperation in MOOC projects
• Machine learning and AI in online learning
• Course and curriculum design
• Learning analytics

You can find a more complete list of example topics here.

Submissions will undergo a two-step, double-blind review process. A structured abstract (up to 2 pages) will be submitted first. Upon acceptance, authors will submit their full paper (up to 6 pages) for second review and full acceptance.

The first deadline is fast approaching. Here’s the submission process timeline:

• April 3: Abstract upload deadline.
• April 14: Abstract acceptance notification.
• May 12: Full paper upload deadline.
• June 30: Full paper acceptance notification.

Registration

If you’d like to attend the conference, you can find the registration page here. Registrations haven’t opened yet, but you’ll find information there regarding registration fees, including the early bird rates.

Class Central is a media partner of LWMOOCs 2023.