Iversity

Last updated
Iversity
Iversity neu.jpg
Type of site
 Online education
Available inEnglish, German and Russian
Created by Jonas Liepmann and Hannes Klöpper
URL www.iversity.org
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
Users 600.000+ (February 2015)
LaunchedOctober 2013;10 years ago (2013-10)
Current statusActive

Iversity (stylised as "iversity") is a Berlin-based online education platform. Since October 2013, iversity has specialised in providing online courses and lectures in higher education, specifically MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). [1] [2] [3] Courses are free and open for anyone to enroll and participate. [4] Many of them are conducted in English or German, but also in other languages. [5] iversity cooperates with individual professors as well as different European universities. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Some of the courses were winners of the MOOC Production Fellowship held in early 2013. [11] [12] [13] iversity.org officially launched the MOOC platform online in October 2013 [8] [14] [15] and as of February 2015 has a user base of 600,000 online learners, enrolled in 63 courses offered by 41 partner universities. iversity is the only MOOC platform offering courses with ECTS-integration. [16] [17] iversity has branch offices in Bernau bei Berlin, Germany and Berlin.

Contents

History

Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) harness visual elements (lecture videos, animations, graphics), interactive elements (simulations) and written materials (scientific articles). [31] [32] [33] [34] All elements can be reviewed at any time. Instructors and course participants can interact with each other in discussion forums. [35] Instructors can use quizzes to get feedback on the learning progress of the course participants. [36] Most iversity courses end with a final assessment or exam. Exams can be taken on-site, online as “proctored-exam” or in form of a final project that has to be handed in to the instructor.

Students at iversity.org can choose between different study paths, resulting in different certificates. “Statement of Participation” is free-of-charge, other certificates come with varying costs – depending on which level of certification the student chooses. [37] [38] Universities that offer a course at iversity have the option of offering European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits. This track allows students to receive credits from their courses and apply them to their university studies. ECTS Credits can be used at any European Higher Education Institution. A certificate that awards ECTS credits is issued once the participant has passed an on-site or online proctored exam. [39] [40] Enrolment to courses is free, costs only apply when purchasing certificates.

For the production of courses, iversity collaborates with European universities and individual professors. Lecturers design their MOOCs with technical support from iversity. iversity cooperates with institutions such as

Business Model

iversity earns revenue through the sale of certificates, which online learners receive after completing courses on iversity.org thereby catering to all types of learners, among them working professionals who need to document their learning achievements and university students. [32] Some courses at iversity can be integrated into the student's diploma through the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). iversity has raised more than €5 million in venture capital. The investors are T-Venture, BMP media investors, BFB Frühphasenfonds, Masoud Kamali, Westtech Ventures, CRALS, Peter Zühlsdorf and Kontor B45. The iversity advisory board consists of Dr. Jörg Dräger and Prof. Édouard Husson.

See also

Related Research Articles

OpenCourseWare (OCW) are course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. OCW projects first appeared in the late 1990s, and after gaining traction in Europe and then the United States have become a worldwide means of delivering educational content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open education</span> Educational movement

Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.

Babbel GmbH, operating as Babbel, is a German subscription-based language learning software and e-learning platform, available in various languages since January 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Ng</span> American artificial intelligence researcher

Andrew Yan-Tak Ng is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massive open online course</span> Education service on the web

A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Udemy</span> American online learning platform

Udemy, Inc. is an education technology company, founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar. It is based in San Francisco, California, United States, with hubs in Denver, Colorado; Dublin, Ireland; Austin, Texas; Melbourne, Australia; İstanbul, Turkey, and Gurgaon, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Udacity</span> For-profit educational organization

Udacity, Inc. is an American for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coursera</span> Online education technology company

Coursera Inc. is an American global massive open online course provider. It was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of subjects.

edX Online education provider

edX is a US for-profit online education platform owned by 2U since 2021. The platform's main focus is to manage a variety of offerings, including elite brand bootcamps.

MITx is the massive open online course (MOOC) program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A constituent program of MIT's Office of Digital Learning, MITx produces MOOCs from MIT departments and faculty. Prior to 2U's acquisition of edX, MITx courses appeared there. After the acquisition, courses appeared on MIT's own site. MITx also supports residential experiments with scalable learning technologies and research on digital learning. MOOCs offered through edX by MITx are open-enrollment and free to take. In September 2012, edX and MITx introduced the option to receive an ID verified certificate on some courses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Codecademy</span> Online code-learning platform

Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS. The site also offers a paid "Pro" option that gives users access to personalized learning plans, quizzes, and realistic projects.

openSAP is an Enterprise MOOC platform for massive open online courses, or MOOCs. It is provided by SAP and hosted at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Everyone can enroll in openSAP courses, which are provided free of charge.

Eliademy [əlɪaˈdəmi] was a free online classroom that allowed educators and students to create, share and manage online courses with real-time discussions and task management. Eliademy was based on Moodle, Bootstrap and other open source technologies. Eliademy was unveiled to public in February 2013 by CBTec. Eliademy was available in 32 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coursmos</span> Online micro-learning platform

Coursmos is an online micro-learning platform. It offered approximately 50,000 lessons within approximately 11,000 courses with courses broken down into smaller lessons, typically no longer than three minutes each.

In higher education a microdegree, also microcredentials and microcourse, is a qualification focused upon a specified professional or career discipline and typically comprises one or more sources of accelerated educational experiences. Microdegrees are a single manifestation of Competency Based Education (CBE) which seeks to tie credentialing to specific skills sets. Micro-credentials may be completed on-site, online or in a blended format.

imc AG is a German software company and supplier of E-Learning content with headquarters in Saarbrücken.

Language MOOCs are web-based online courses freely accessible for a limited period of time, created for those interested in developing their skills in a foreign language. As Sokolik (2014) states, enrolment is large, free and not restricted to students by age or geographic location. They have to follow the format of a course, i.e., include a syllabus and schedule and offer the guidance of one or several instructors. The MOOCs are not so new, since courses with such characteristics had been available online for quite a lot of time before Dave Cormier coined the term 'MOOC' in 2008. Furthermore, MOOCs are generally regarded as the natural evolution of OERs, which are freely accessible materials used in Education for teaching, learning and assessment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning</span> Indian e-learning platform

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning(NPTEL) is an Indian e-learning platform for university-level science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. NPTEL is the largest e-repository in the world of courses in engineering, basic sciences and selected humanities and management subjects. The platform and materials have been jointly developed by Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science. The initiative is funded by the central Ministry of Education. The project's central idea is to put recorded lectures taught by its member institutes online for open access. It operates an educational YouTube channel covering engineering, basic sciences, and some humanities and social science subjects. Popular NPTEL courses are being translated into popular local languages. The local languages which the translation are available in include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

Online enrollments in higher education have grown substantially, especially after the global shutdown. Convenience and flexibility is not the only explanation for this rapid growth. Universities, facing budget shortfalls, have turned to Online Program Managers, commonly known as OPMs to recruit students and build online programs. OPMs provide bundled products and services to private and public educational institutions in exchange for a revenue sharing arrangement. Universities have come to rely on these services to recruit new students, design, develop, run online programs and more.

fast.ai is a non-profit research group focused on deep learning and artificial intelligence. It was founded in 2016 by Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas with the goal of democratizing deep learning. They do this by providing a massive open online course (MOOC) named "Practical Deep Learning for Coders," which has no other prerequisites except for knowledge of the programming language Python.

References

  1. ↑ Lomas, Natasha in Tech Crunch Online: Berlin-Based iversity Relaunches As MOOCs Platform, Sets Its Sights On Becoming The Coursera Of Europe, 11 March 2013.
  2. ↑ Schmidt, Marion in Die Zeit: Digitale Vorlesungshäppchen revolutionieren die Bildung, 6 June 2013.
  3. ↑ Stüber, Jürgen in Berliner Morgenpost: Moocs – das neue Bildungsfernsehen aus der Uni 11 March 2013
  4. ↑ Arte: “iversity – die wirklich globale Universität” [ permanent dead link ], 27 May 2014.
  5. ↑ Fowler, Nina in Venture Village: “Europe’s MOOC experiment accelerates in Berlin” Archived 2015-10-31 at the Wayback Machine , 15 October 2013.
  6. ↑ Blando, Stefano in Cronata Diretta: “E-learnig: L’università italiana in prima linea con i MOOC” [ permanent dead link ], 22 January 2015.
  7. ↑ Mulki, Muhammad Adil in Tribune Pakistan: “Online Courses: Ready to be MOOCed? Archived 2017-11-07 at the Wayback Machine , 20 July 2014.
  8. 1 2 Lomas, Natasha in Tech Crunch: “Europe’s iversity Launches 1st MOOCs With 100k+ Students & Curriculum Of 24 Courses”, 14 October 2013.
  9. ↑ Fachhochschule Köln: “UN und globales Hochschulnetzwerk bieten Online-Kurs zu Umweltkatastrophen und Klimawandel an” Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine , 1 December 2014.
  10. ↑ Haberger, Denise/ von Kieter, Ann-Christin in UNICUM: “MOOC: Online-Kurse für die Uni von Zuhause” [ permanent dead link ], 3 February 2014.
  11. ↑ Schuetze, Christopher in New York Times: “European Universities Catch the Online Wave”, 22 September 2013.
  12. ↑ Lupke-Narberhaus, Frauke in Der Spiegel Online: “Videos im Wettbewerb: Wo ist der beste Mooc?”, 22 June 2013.
  13. ↑ ZDF heute-Nachrichten: “Das Web wird zum Hörsaal” [ permanent dead link ], 24 June 2013.
  14. ↑ "Berlin-Based iversity Relaunches As MOOCs Platform, Sets Its Sights On Becoming The Coursera Of Europe – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2018-05-16.
  15. ↑ Winkler, Kirsten in: Edcetera: “Lessons from the iversity Launch” [ permanent dead link ], 16 October 2013.
  16. ↑ Kastner, Daniel in Spiegel Online: “Online-Seminare an Unis: Tablets raus, Massenarbeit!”, 5 November 2014.
  17. ↑ Pfeiffer, Lola in Webmagazin: “Der Januar-Lehrplan von iversity ist da” [ permanent dead link ], 4 December 2014.
  18. ↑ Grossman, Sara in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “American MOOC Providers Face International Competition”, 5 July 2013.
  19. 1 2 Lomas, Natasha. "Online learning platform iversity gets a lifeline from Holtzbrinck media group". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  20. ↑ Wired Academic: "5 Questions With An EdTech Startup: Hannes Klöpper of Berlin-based MOOC provider ‘iversity" Archived 2016-04-22 at the Wayback Machine , 4 July 2013.
  21. ↑ Fowler, Nina in Venture Village: “Online education platform iversity raises funding from T-Venture and new CEO” Archived 2015-10-31 at the Wayback Machine , 16 January 2013.
  22. ↑ iversity: “Press Release: iversity creates Advisory Board” [ permanent dead link ], 18 December 2013.
  23. ↑ Weigert, Martin in Netzwertig: “Zwei Jahre später - heiße Startups aus Berlin und was aus ihnen geworden ist”, 29 January 2014.
  24. ↑ Fowler, Nina in Venture Village: "Professors, want to teach online? Berlin’s Iversity offers ten €25,000 MOOC fellowships" Archived 2015-10-31 at the Wayback Machine , 11 March 2013.
  25. ↑ Blumenstyk, Goldie in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Company Offers Cash Prizes to Lure Professors to Teach MOOCs", 25 April 2013.
  26. ↑ Winkler, Kirsten in Edukwest: "MOOC Production Fellowship announces Winners", 10 June 2013.
  27. ↑ Lomas, Natasha in Tech Crunch: “European Online Education Startup, iversity, Gets ~500k Course Sign-Ups In First 4-Months”, 19 February 2014.
  28. ↑ Alexander, Kay in Edukwest: “iversity Nears 500.000 Enrollments” [ permanent dead link ], 20 February 2014. Archived 2014-02-20 at the Wayback Machine
  29. ↑ "Holtzbrinck Digital investiert in strauchelndes Iversity". Gründerszene Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  30. ↑ "Iversity hat Insolvenz angemeldet – und will klein weitermachen". Gründerszene Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  31. ↑ Shirky, Clay in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "MOOCs and Economic Reality", 8 July 2013.
  32. 1 2 Bohle, Shannon in SciLogs: “Librarians and the Era of the MOOC”, 11 Mai 2013.
  33. ↑ Price, Matthew in The Oklahoman: "First massive open online course at University of Oklahoma to feature graphic novel", 1 March 2013.
  34. ↑ Young, Jeffrey R. in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Object Formerly Known as the Textbook", 27 January 2013.
  35. ↑ iversity: “User Interaction: What learning at iversity looks like”, 13 October 2013. Archived 2013-10-20 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ↑ iversity: "What learning at iversity looks like: Breaking down the 90 minute lecture", 26 September 2013. Archived 2013-10-20 at the Wayback Machine
  37. ↑ Kraft-Linder, Annalisa in Daily Finance: “MOOCs: What’s A Great College Class Worth When It’s Free?”, 16 April 2014.
  38. ↑ Winkler, Kirsten in Edcetera: “Verified Certificates – MOOC’s Money Maker or Anachronism?”, 24 April 2014. Archived 2015-02-18 at the Wayback Machine
  39. ↑ Strobel, Marisa in M-Magazin: “Virtuell lernen mit MOOCs” [ permanent dead link ], 5 April 2014.
  40. ↑ iversity: “Online Education Platform iversity.org On The Road To Success” [ permanent dead link ], 19 February 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.