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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION 1

UNED OER Experience: From OCW to Open UNED

Salvador Ros, Senior Member, IEEE, Roberto Hernández, Senior Member, IEEE, Timothy Read,
Miguel Rodrı́guez Artacho, Senior Member, IEEE, Rafael Pastor, Member, IEEE, and
Gabriel Dı́az Orueta, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—Much as happened with open software, there has been modified, and evolved the use of the term “OER” [3], [4]. As
a global attitude shift in the education community toward the open a result, educational resources have gone from being a key in-
sharing of educational courses and resources. As the largest public tellectual property of the competitive higher education world to
distance education university in Spain, Universidad Nacional
de Educación a Distancia (UNED) has had a clear commitment being free resources on the Web; this most important freedom
to open learning and content since its very beginnings. Its open to share knowledge has been accomplished without any loss of
courseware (OCW) portal was started in 2006 and has received quality [5]–[7].
several prizes for its innovative content. During this period, the This growth of OER can be argued to depend upon three
OCW materials were used to supplement standard teaching in a factors: 1) standards; 2) social resource production; and 3) an
variety of educational applications, among them induction and
competence transfer courses. These initiatives have been used as e-learning model of teaching. For the first of these, e-learning
a starting point for a comprehensive open educational resource standards are increasingly appearing; they use a variety of for-
(OER) policy at UNED. Efforts to foster OER initiatives are col- mats to represent various aspects of learning material [8] and
lected in the project called UNED Abierta (Open UNED). UNED allow the embedding of instructional knowledge and structure
currently publishes its open resources in various platforms and into educational resources [9]. These capabilities have evolved
formats, such as iTunes U, MOOC, and OpenCourseWare. This
paper presents UNED’s experience in OER and describes how it the educational resources shifted from a “monolithic brick” to a
is tackling the new challenges in OER creation and distribution. shareable and reusable resource that can be used individually or
in combination to give a variety of resources with a wide range
Index Terms—Higher education, massive online open courses,
open content, open courseware, open educational resources. of granularity.
Second, the emergence of social networks was a direct corol-
lary to the appearance of both the social web and the social com-
I. INTRODUCTION munities of users existing even before the advent of the World
Wide Web. These communities can share and edit educational
resources using standards-based editors and create modules and

L EARNING resources are an important asset both for in-

dividuals and institutions. In much the same way that at-
titudes toward sharing in the software community led to open
courses in a straightforward way. This has no comparison to
the sharing or modification of educational material in the days
of overhead projectors. Educators now have access to federated
software, over the last decade, attitudes in the global educa- repositories, course editors, and hundreds of virtual learning en-
tion community have evolved toward the open sharing of ed- vironments capable of managing courses and students.
ucational courses and resources [1]. The inception of the open Third and finally, the e-learning approach has evolved over
educational resources (OER) movement was fostered by the the last decade from a lesser educational model to an equally
Web 2.0 trend and the spirit of Stallman’s knowledge sharing valid approach to higher education; virtual environments
initiative [2]. Since then, the scientific community has clarified, can provide a vast range of rich interactions for learning
communities, reshaping the traditional view of a class with
Manuscript received April 30, 2013; revised October 21, 2013; March students [10], [11]. The classroom-based approach is no longer
22, 2014; and May 15, 2014; accepted May 30, 2014. This work was sup-
the only one available, as students combine classes with video
ported by the European Union projects RIPLECS (517836-LLP-1-2011-1-ES-
ERASMUS-ESMO), PAC (517742-LLP-1-2011-1-BG-ERASMUS-ECUE), classes and open materials found on the Web. OERs are now
EMTM (2011-1-PL1-LEO05-19883), SO-CALL-ME (FFI2011-29829), successful, thanks to a variety of repositories such as MERLOT,
MUREE (530332-TEMPUS-1-2012-1-JO-TEMPUS-JPCR), and Go-Lab
Connexions, OpenLearn, and others, whose hundreds of thou-
(FP7-ICT-2011-8/317601); the Spanish Ministry of Science and In-
novation under Project TIN2008-06083-C03/TSI and CREASE Project sands of pieces of content or material represent thousands of
TIN2009-14317-C03; and the Region of Madrid under the E-Madrid Network freely available learning hours.
of Excellence (S2009/TIC-1650).
In essence, the key value of OER revolves around the
S. Ros, R. Hernández, and R. Pastor are with the Control and Communication
Systems Department, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), freedom to share the knowledge they contain, with relevant
28040 Madrid, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; open licensing allowing it to be reused in different ways
[email protected]).
and forms. One of the most common definitions of OER
T. Read and M. R. Artacho are with the Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos
(LSI) Department, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), 28040 is “digitized educational material offered freely and openly
Madrid, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). for students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching,
G. Díaz Orueta is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
learning and research.” As with the model of free software, this
(IEEC) Department, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), 28040
Madrid, Spain (e-mail:, [email protected]). definition assumes that educational resources are intended to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2014.2331216 be used freely, reused in different contexts, and also combined

0018-9359 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

and reformatted in various educational resources [6], just as

with a freely available LEGO brick. As in other higher edu-
cation institutions, the OER model at the Spanish University
for Distance Education [Universidad Nacional de Educación
a Distancia (UNED)], Madrid, Spain, has the objective of
providing an open expandable pool of high quality resources
for the educational community that can be used and shared
freely. Specifically, in the UNED OER initiative detailed here,
a Creative Commons license is used to ensure that the academic
community can reuse, share, combine, and restructure the
resources.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section II de-
scribes the creation of the open courseware (OWC) Web site,
UNED’s first step toward fostering OER. Section III introduces
Open UNED as UNED’s subsequent step in creating the OER
framework. Finally, Section IV presents some conclusions.
Fig. 1. Participation of enrolled students in virtual induction communities be-
tween 2008–2012, by area of study.
II. FIRST STEP: UNED OCW WEBSITE
UNED [12] is a public funded distance university that has communities are used on average by more than 50% percent of
a clear social purpose. The largest public university in Spain, the new students at UNED [15].
it has a virtual campus [13], with approximately 220 000 stu-
dents, 1500 lecturers, and 2000 administrative staff, and it of- B. TCSRL Courses
fers around 2000 courses. In addition, it has many study centers, TCSRL courses, in comparison, are open, self-paced courses
called Associated Centers (ACs), and extension centers in small that allow students to learn more about UNED, the method-
towns throughout Spain and other countries in Europe, Africa, ology of distance education, and strategies for learning in an
Asia, and North and South America. independent and self-regulated manner. For example, in the
UNED’s OCW movement started in 2006, with the opening first offering of an “UNED First Steps” course in 2012, about
of the UNED Open Courseware office and the building of 4000 students were enrolled, of whom 33.1% completed the
the first courses, and officially began in 2007 when the Open course. From these, 90% rated it positively or very positively,
Courseware Web site was opened. UNED is currently working and 95% would recommend it to others. More engagement in
on the new challenges of OER creation and distribution. The virtual communities was observed for those who completed
Open Course Ware experience was set up as a free knowl- the course than for those who did not [15], [16]. Therefore,
edge initiative, and as a starting point for other educational UNED’s OCW, instead of being simply used to share knowl-
experiences, with the OCW portal being intended not only edge openly and encourage lifelong learning, was and is being
to disseminate open materials, but also to be a platform for used to support various courses related to distance-learning
innovation in teaching methodology and technology. During methodology itself.
this first period (2006–2009) of UNED’s OCW movement, four
major components were put in place: C. Integration of Social Networks
• introductory courses; The most noteworthy of the technological innovations in
• training courses for self-regulated learning (TCSRL); UNED’s OCW was the use of social networks. Because the
• the integration of social networks into open courses; OCW site lacked either synchronous or asynchronous com-
• assessment of competences. munication tools, the open courses used a classic learning
methodology to supply the social dimension. One way to
A. Introductory Courses
remedy this deficiency was to link the courses with social
Open courses made it possible to offer introductory classes to networks, to enrich and energize them so that students could
new students at UNED, where every year about 60 000 students interact as they would in a traditional learning management
enroll for the first time. This initiative, “Cursos 0,” is based on system (LMS). This also allowed new actors, such as facili-
detecting what skills students lack when starting their higher tators, to be added to the course to assist the students in their
education, particularly the skills required when embarking on studies.
an education in a distance-learning university [14]. A set of UNED’s OCW social dimension was implemented by having
courses, organized by area of study, was developed to inculcate every OCW course owner—that is, each of the lecturers who ran
those skills and to allow those students who had not been studied the courses—set up a Facebook group for their course. These
formally for some time to refresh and bring up to date their ex- groups were structured to have open access so that every par-
isting knowledge. There are currently six Cursos 0—courses in ticipant could publish to the group (as in a forum space in an
physics, mathematics, biology, and chemistry. Associated with LMS). The Facebook group thus became a communication tool
these courses are virtual induction communities for first-year much like a learning course space. This approach was focused
students, whose participation in these is shown in Fig. 1. These to add new innovative communication/collaborating features in
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ROS et al.: UNED OER EXPERIENCE: FROM OCW TO OPEN UNED 3

Fig. 2. Annual numbers of users of the OCW Web site.

Fig. 3. Geographic location of Spanish-language users.

a “static” space, based only on content as the main feature.

In 2006, a survey was conducted in one of the OCW courses TABLE I
VISITS TO OCW WEB SITE APRIL 2013
to evaluate the usefulness of incorporating the social dimen-
sion [17]. The major findings were that 87% of students agree
that the social network phenomenon was sufficiently mature
to integrate it in formal learning processes, and 95% of stu-
dents agreed that the use of Facebook, or other communica-
tion tools, improved the pedagogical framework of the OCW.
Clearly, OCW platforms were at that time ready to incorporate
the kind of social networking tools that subsequently became
available in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) frameworks TABLE II
ANNUAL RATE OF NEW OCW WEB SITE USERS
from 2010.
Several studies report the influence of social networks on
learning scenarios. The study in [18] shows how the use of Face-
book as an additional learning tool has positive effects on stu-
dents’ academic performance.

D. Integrating Assessments
Having embedded the social dimension in the open courses,
for student–student and student–teacher communication, all that
remained was to incorporate assessment tools to certify skills users (Table II), suggesting that the site’s content is still rele-
acquisition. This was mainly done to satisfy the requirement to vant for users.
certify student hours of work using European Credit Transfer UNED’s OCW success is due to two factors: the overall
and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits and, if possible, have strategy of the UNED virtual campus architecture [19] and the
this appear in the student academic profile for official purposes. implementation of production management processes [20]. The
authors were able influence this as policy- and decision-makers
E. UNED’s OCW Today in UNED’s Innovation and Technological Development Center.
The research and innovation in these 2004–2009 initiatives The UNED campus architecture strategy allowed the inte-
were the basis for the evolution of the OCW Web site toward the gration and efficient control of selected on-campus teaching
MOOC platform and the current method of course certification. tools with the main university management systems. A support
OCW was well accepted. It has shown steady growth in users service for faculty helped them efficiently create large courses
(Fig. 2) with nearly 3 million users over the 6-year period. using a common development framework based on the UNED
UNED’s OCW is the most visited OCW Web site in the Uni- methodology [20], [21], ensuring a quality process.
versia consortium (http://ocw.universia.net/es/), a network of The quality process pays particular attention to compliance
Ibero-American universities. In 2009, according to Nielsen Site- with accessibility standards and the incorporation of metadata
Census (http://www.nielsen-online.com), about 30% of the Uni- to allow adequate indexing and course description. Currently,
versia Web site visits were to UNED’s OCW, about 10% more the production and quality process includes indicators to ensure
than the second most popular Web site. Google Analytics indi- double-A accessibility compliance, with a minimum of five
cates that close to 16% of the visits were from Latin American metadata fields to reflect data authoring and coworkers (if
countries (Fig. 3). any), and a course summary to allow for it to be indexed and
Currently, UNED’s OCW offers 46 courses. The 10 most pop- easily searched both on the eduCommons platform and external
ular average over 80 000 visits, with a peak of 200 000 visits. To search engines. Since the Web site fosters innovative proposals
publish on this site, a user must accept the Creative Commons in methodology and technology, faculty can undertake new
License, allowing free use and sharing of knowledge. Table I educational proposals and research in learning technologies.
shows April 2013 data indicating that the OCW Web site is still As a result, UNED OCW courses have received several
a dynamic, growing Web site, and it is in constant growing. On awards, three from the Spanish Ministry of Education and one
average, over 75% of the Web site’s users each year are new from the Spanish Publishers Association; more recently, it has
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

Fig. 5. UNED COMA architecture.

TABLE III
Fig. 4. Uned Abierta (Open Uned) Web site. USE OF UNED’S MOOC WEB SITE (APRIL 2013)

received the OpenCourseWare Excellence Award in the cate-

gory of Outstanding Site from the Open Education Consortium
(April 2014).

III. FROM OPEN COURSEWARE TO OPEN UNED massive, i.e., have a large number of students. Second, a course
would need to be open, in the sense that students have unre-
The UNED Abierta, or Open UNED project, was started in
stricted access to it and are not be required to pay any fees (or
October 2012 as a direct continuation of more than 40 years
demonstrate previous knowledge or abilities) to enroll. Third,
of work in the area of open education within the university.
an MOOC needs to use an online delivery method. Finally,
Without a shadow of a doubt, this project has been one of the
an MOOC must be a course in its own right, i.e., it includes
highest profile projects started by the university in the area of
content, a schedule, a didactic method, and some form of
educational innovation and was reported in more than 140 news
assessment to satisfy a predefined learning goal. Since the first
media (including all the main national newspapers) as well as
MOOC appeared in Open UNED in 2012, more than 105 000
more than 100 Web sites dedicated to different aspects of edu-
students have registered in the 20 courses available (Table III).
cational technology. This interest was due both to the innovative
nature of the project, including the first large-scale MOOC of-
A. UNED COMA Architecture
fering in the Spanish language, and to the widespread demand
for such educational advances due to the effects of the economic When the decision was taken to offer MOOCs at UNED,
crisis and high unemployment. no open-source platform was available that could be adopted.
What Open UNED offers, for the first time in the history of UNED’s experience of running a virtual campus and online
the university, is an amalgamation of open content and practices courses have shown that it is important to have the institution’s
from various parts of the university under the Creative Com- own dedicated software so that it can be adapted to other sys-
mons license, accessible from a single entry point or Web portal tems at the university [for example, single sign on (SSO) or
(Fig. 4). testing systems] and can be extended as the courses are run and
In addition to the OCW portal, Open UNED gives access new objectives are identified. Therefore, development began
to other projects including: iTunes U (with six courses and on a platform, Aprendo (or OpenMOOC) for these courses.
19 collections); the multimedia material generated within Courses consist of units; these contain knowledge quanta—the
the UNED’s center for audio video production (CEMAV, smallest unit of learning activity within the system. Student per-
www.uned.es/cemav), with over 8000 h of video, 20 000 h of formance on these activities is evaluated by peer review process.
audio, and over 1 700 000 viewings of recordings in YouTube; The peer review assignments indicate the various criteria to be
and the University’s MOOCs (or Curso Online Masivo Abierto, taken into account and how many reviewers are required to eval-
COMA, in Spanish). The evolution from OERs to MOOCs uate the assignment. Finally, students can pass the course and
that has taken place in the last decade [22] has taken the field are awarded a badge to acknowledge their achievement. The
from one based in educational content to one based on student MOOC’s architecture has three basic components (Fig. 5).
participation and communication, linked to both educational • Identity provider: This is responsible for identifying users,
resources and learning activities. MOOCs can include tools and based upon SimpleSAMLphp and related modules and
that simulate some face-to-face interactions [23]. templates, this module also handles user registration, man-
MOOCs are a type of online course whose structure agement of user data, and SSO.
and dynamics appear to offer an effective way to facilitate • Moocng: The platform’s core, this module, written in
learning [24]. Following [25], MOOCs can be said to be Python/Django, allows course designers to create, manage,
courses with four basic characteristics (although this is dis- and release courses and students to request to participate
puted [26]). First, in order to qualify, a course needs to be in them and then actually take part.
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ROS et al.: UNED OER EXPERIENCE: FROM OCW TO OPEN UNED 5

TABLE IV TABLE V
TOP FIVE UNED MOOCS AND THEIR ENROLLMENT UNED MOOC COURSE COST BREAKDOWN

• Askbot: This question-and-answering module is currently

the main mode of communication between teachers and
students.
B. UNED COMA Methodology
Fig. 6. Sample badges given in Open UNED MOOCs.
Given the high user numbers expected, the decision was taken
early on that, unlike in formal courses, no direct MOOC plat-
form support could be provided to the students enrolled. To certification can be obtained in Open UNED MOOCs. The first
compensate for this, as well as providing an FAQ for the plat- is in the form of badges given to students who achieve certain
form and its components and another FAQ for common ques- competences during a course (Fig. 6).
tions that arise in each course, the roles of facilitator and cu- Second, students can obtain credentials online by paying
rator were created. The former had the role of keeping a given between 10–15 Euros (depending on the course length and
course’s students active; although not able to answer technical structure) and undertaking a test. Finally, students can obtain
questions about the platform, the facilitator had students direct certificates by going to a regional UNED study center, paying
their queries and problems to the forums. The curator, who was 30–60 Euros (once again depending on course length and
again unable to give technical support, was able to answer ques- structure), and taking a test. During the trial period of the certi-
tions about course content and generally indicate where answers fication process, more than 780 credentials and certificates were
could be found, either within the course materials or from an- issued; so far, more than 3000 certificates have been issued,
swers to other questions within the forums. representing about 60 000 Euros of income. Since over 100 000
What actually made the forums such a valuable self-support Euros was invested in creating and running these courses, this
tool was the voting mechanism, which allowed students to rate suggests that the investment is sustainable and viable, with a
the answers given to their questions. This meant that when other return of investment (ROI) of about 56% in the first year. The
students searched for a given question in the forum, the highest- average cost of one course is about 5320 Euros, broken down
rated answers appeared at the top of the results. Finally, it should by task in Table V. Except for platform costs, these task costs
be noted that even though no direct support was provided, cu- are only incurred during the first year. The average revenue for
rators advised the platform developers when potential problems a given course is about 3000 Euros—that is about 56% of the
were identified so that any technical issues with the software total cost.
could be resolved as soon as possible. A further 13 courses are in preparation, and others have been
Given the nature of MOOCs, and the difficulty in actually proposed for subsequent preparation and incorporation.
clearly specifying what one actually is and when any online Another indication of the degree of student activity is the
course is, or is not, an MOOC [27], the pedagogic approach participation in peer-to-peer activities within the MOOCs, with
used was quite eclectic. Some courses had a very formal struc- over 17 000 student-generated resources that have been subse-
ture with students almost following a script of what they had quently revised over 48 000 times.
to do. Other courses focused more on student-generated content
and a consensus on what had to be learned and how.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The top five courses are listed in Table IV, together with
their enrollment. It is interesting to note that the most popular How OER initiatives and, in particular, MOOCs will affect
courses are those related to second language learning. In total, education in universities like UNED in the future is still hard
these courses have been accessed more than 1 100 000 times to predict; if universities are to survive, they will need to adapt
(with over 430 000 unique accesses), and in a similar fashion, both to the threat posed by informal and social learning (as ex-
the video recordings that are used in them, and are stored in emplified by MOOCs).
YouTube, have also been seen more than 1 000 000 times. Such a threat typifies how society as a whole is using online
Given the activities in each course, and how long the stu- resources and social networks as an everyday part of people’s
dents spent online connected to them, over 130 000 h of learning lives. As general access to information becomes more mobile
activities have been undertaken in the courses. Three types of and ubiquitous, the knowledge and learning will reinforce the
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

demand (and that behavior) so that future learning can be un- For the future, new initiatives in Open UNED will shape the
dertaken in the same semi-structured way. nature of the project; these are tied to the evolving model of
The experiences at UNED show that in both formal and in- UNED’s core business. One such initiative is the transition of
formal learning students demand open content to improve their the UNED MOOC platform Aprendo from a project maintained
knowledge and consider the social aspect of e-learning to be of entirely by UNED to an open software project, of an indepen-
great importance. Also significant is the large number of stu- dent platform OpenMooc, with its own developer community
dents using MOOC platforms compared to those using OCW (http://openmooc.org), that can be downloaded and used under
platforms. an appropriate source license such as Apache/GPL. There are
From the technological point of view, current OER initiatives now several MOOC platforms available (although none as func-
are based on the new MOOC platforms moving away from tra- tional as OpenMooc available with a free software license), so
ditional platforms and adapting their content to the pervasive it remains to be seen whether it will be economically viable in
new technologies. These advances introduce multimedia con- the medium term.
tent such as video or assessments, as well as the social perspec- Another step in the roadmap of these technologies is related
tive, thus leaving behind the traditional instructional Web-based to the implementation of remote laboratories embedded in
course. MOOCs. Some scenarios are being developed at this moment
This kind of educational paradigm represents a direct chal- in UNED’s research group. These new courses will foster and
lenge to courses that charge enrollment fees, which make up the enhance the learning experience by giving students access to
great majority on the online professional training. Such an ap- real laboratories from their homes.
proach could be threatening to an institution if such professional OER initiatives offer new challenges that institutions must
training courses represented an important revenue stream. If no address to respond to the societal needs.
fee is required to enroll in a course, then other means of recu-
perating the course running costs must be found. This does not,
however, imply a direct relationship between course costs and
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 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

ROS et al.: UNED OER EXPERIENCE: FROM OCW TO OPEN UNED 7

[16] A. Sánchez-Elvira-Paniagua, M. González-Brignardello, T. Bravo Roberto Hernández (M’00–SM’07) received the M.Sc. degree in physics, spe-
de Dios, and A. Martín-Cuadrado, “Cómo preparar a los estudiantes cialized in electronics, from Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, in 1989,
nuevos para estudiar a distancia: el e-UNED Primeros Pasos,” in Proc. and the Ph.D. degree in sciences from the Spanish University for Distance Ed-
Conf. Int. UNED-ICDE, Madrid, Spain, 2013, pp. 34–38. ucation (UNED), Madrid, Spain, in 1994.
[17] D. Dominguez, P. Trillo, A. Sanchez-Elvira, and E. Reula, “Usos ed- He is an Associate Professor with the Control and Communication Systems
ucativos de redes sociales en cursos en abierto (OCW),” 2006 [Online]. Department, UNED. He was the Dean of Technologies with the School of Com-
Available: http://www.slideshare.net/ereula/usos-educativos-de-redes- puter Science, UNED, for 8 years. His research interests include quality-of-
sociales-en-cursos-en-abierto-ocw-14058514 service support in distributed systems and development of infrastructures for
[18] N. Leelathakul and K. Chaipah, “Quantitative effects of using Face- e-learning. He has coauthored more than 60 publications in international jour-
book as a learning tool on students,” in Proc. 10th JCSSE, 2013, pp. nals and conferences on these topics.
87–92.
[19] S. Ros, R. Hernández, T. Read, and R. Pastor, “The UNED’s interop-
erable virtual campus service management architecture,” in Proc. 40th
ASEE/IEEE Frontiers Educ. Conf., Washington, DC, USA, 2010, pp. Timothy Read received the First Class Honors degree from the University of
S3J-1–S3J-6. the West of England, Bristol, U.K., in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree from the Uni-
[20] S. Ros, E. Reula, R. Hernández, T. Read, and R. Pastor, versity of Birmingham, Birmingham, U.K., in 1995, both in computer science.
“OCW Web site: Methodological, organizational and tech- He is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Computer Science, Spanish Open
nological innovation,” in Proc. OCW World Conf., Hanoi, University (UNED), Madrid, Spain. He co-founded the Applying Technology
Vietnam, 2010 [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/ to Languages (ATLAS) research group more than a decade ago, and since then
publication/260868596_OCW_web_site_Methodological_ has worked in several national and European projects on issues related to CALL
organizational_and_technological_innovation?ev=prf_pub and MALL. He has been Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor of Technology in Cen-
[21] M. Santamaría and A. Sánchez-Elvira, “La adaptación de la Uned al tres, Director General of the Centre for Technological Innovation and Devel-
Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, Vicerrectorado de Calidad e opment of the same institution, and Director of Open UNED (the program for
Innovación Docente, IUED,” Madrid, Spain, 2007. open courses and MOOCs). His teaching, research, and professional activity in
[22] L. Yuan and S. Powell, “White paper,” University of Bolton: general is focused on applications of online collaborative Intelligent CALL for
CETIS, 2013, Last accessed May 14, 2014 [Online]. Available: distance learning scenarios.
http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/2013/667
[23] T. Read et al., “The generation and exploitation open educational re-
sources in virtual attendance in UNED,” in Proc. ADNTIIC, 2010, pp.
132–141.
[24] K. Masters, “A brief guide to understanding MOOCs,” Internet J. Med. Miguel Rodríguez Artacho (M’00–SM’06) received the M.Sc. degree in com-
Educ., vol. 1, no. 2, 2011. puter science from the Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1994,
[25] D. Lukes, “What is and what is not a MOOC: A picture of family re- and the Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering from Universidad Nacional de
semblance, 2012,” Last accessed May 14, 2014 [Online]. Available: Educacion a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain, in 2000
http://researchity.net/author/dominik-lukes/ He is an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean with the School of Computer Sci-
[26] D. Wiley, “The MOOC misnomer,” Jul. 2012 [Online]. Available: ence, UNED. He is Director of the Learning Technologies and Cooperative Sys-
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2436 tems Group, LSI Department, and UNED coordinator of the eLearning eMadrid
[27] P. Hill, “Four barriers that MOOCs must overcome to build a sus- project. He actively participates in learning technology standardization groups
tainable model,” 2012 [Online]. Available: http://mfeldstein.com/four- like JTC1/SC36 and CEN/TC353. He currently holds the technical secretariat
barriers-that-moocs-must-overcome-to-become-sustainable-model of Spanish e-learning standardization body AEN/CTN71/SC36.
[28] D. Willets, “UNESCO report, 2012,” Last accessed May 14, 2014
[Online]. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/
hefce-annual-conference-2012
Rafael Pastor (M’06) received the M.Sc. degree in physics from Complutense
University, Madrid, Spain, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science
from the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Spain,
in 2006.
He is an Associate Professor with the Control and Communication Systems
Department, UNED, and since 1994, has been working with UNED’s Computer
Sciences Faculty. He was Innovation Manager of the Innovation and Develop-
ment Centre of UNED from 2004 to 2009, and from 2009 to 2011, as General
Manager, added innovative services to UNED’s learning model.
Dr. Pastor is a member of the IEEE, Spanish Education Society and .LRN
Board Consortium.

Gabriel Dı́az Orueta (M’03–SM’06) received the Ph.D. degree in physics from
Salvador Ros (M’06–SM’07) received the M.Sc. degree in physics, specialized Autonoma University, Madrid, Spain, in 1988.
in control and automatic systems, from Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, He is a Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
in 1991. (DIEEC), Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Spain.
He is a Senior Lecturer and Vice-Dean of Technologies with the School of His research interests include various approaches for getting the best of ICT
Computer Science, Spanish Open University (UNED), Madrid, Spain. He has technologies applied to different kinds of security and electronics learning for
been Director of Learning Technologies with UNED for 6 years. His research higher education at universities, security measurement and metrics, and security
and professional activity in general is focused on enhanced learning technolo- for process control systems.
gies for distance-learning scenarios. Prof. Dı́az-Orueta is Vice-Chair of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education
Dr. Ros received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award in UNED for his Ph.D. Society. He was awarded the 2007 Chapter Achievement Award and the 2011
dissertation and two special Best Paper awards. Best Large Chapter Award of the IEEE Region 8 environments.