Karolinska Institutet is now starting up the first MOOC in Sweden

Today, Sweden's medical university, Karolinska Institutet, becomes the first university in the country to offer MOOCs (massive open online courses). This means that the university will be enriched this autumn by more than 70,000 new course participants from all over the world who will benefit from the top expertise of its teaching staff on a daily basis.

“We are now standing at the furthest frontier, face to face with the future demand for qualitative university education. This makes Karolinska Institutet an important player in the global education market," says Dean of Higher Education Jan-Olov Höög, noting that the university is in good company.

Specifically, it is the collaboration with international education group edX that has paved the way for these MOOCs. EdX is a non-profit group that began as a collaboration between Harvard University and MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The idea is to use a common platform in order to offer free, high-quality education via the internet in the form of MOOCs. This collaboration has now expanded to involve 36 universities around the world and the edX platform has more than 900,000 registered users. Karolinska Institutet is working side by side with a growing number of highly esteemed universities.

“I see a huge number of spinoff effects in MOOC. Karolinska Institutet gets global exposure and can attract good students in the international education arena. But these courses also create an important internal process for the development of new courses and programmes," says Jan-Olov Höög.

KIx is the name of Karolinska Institutet's online portal, and today marks the start of two of this autumn's four courses, which together have more than 70,000 registered students from all over the world. Although the courses start today, they are still open for registration and all that is needed to participate is a computer and an internet connection. However, if you want to get a certificate at the end of the course, you must submit the work required for credits in all the course elements within the time allowed.

“The response to and the interest in our MOOCs has been much greater than we could have dreamed, which we are delighted by given the range of courses offered by the other top universities. This has definitely whetted our appetite, and we are planning more courses," says Senior Lecturer Nabil Zary, who is responsible for the collaboration with edX.

Karolinska Institutet's MOOCs starting today:

"Behavioral Medicine: A Key to Better Health"
In this course various behaviours and how they can be positively influenced are studied. It is intended for anyone who wants to acquire effective tools for achieving behavioural changes. 

"Explore statistics with R"
“R” is an open source tool that is used for statistical analyses and processing. Participants in this course study statistics, but they also get to learn to use the “R” tool, which allows them to carry out professional statistical work.

Karolinska Institutet's MOOCs starting at the end of 2014:

"Pragmatic randomized controlled trials"
This course provides its participants with the prerequisites that will allow them to perform, evaluate and assure the quality of randomised trials. It develops the expertise of its participants, enabling them to design and conduct trials themselves.

"An introduction to Global Health"
This course is intended for people who want to study and learn more about global health issues and challenges. Professor Hans Rosling, world famous lecturer in global health, provides a number of guest lectures throughout the course.


For information about Karolinska Institutet's MOOC courses: https://www.edx.org/school/kix 

For queries, please contact:

Dead of Higher Education:
Professor Jan-Olov Höög
+46 (0)8-524 877 40 or +46 (0)70-698 77 40
Jan-olov.hoog@ki.se 

edX collaboration coordinator:
Senior Lecturer Nabil Zary
+46 (0)8-524 871 29 or +46 (0)76-947 08 52
nabil.zary@ki.se

Press Officer Sabina Bossi
+46 (0)8-524 838 95 or +46 (0)70 614 60 66
sabina.bossi@ki.se

Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s leading medical universities. It accounts for over 40 per cent of the medical academic research conducted in Sweden and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. Since 1901 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.

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