Iversity
Iversity is a German company in Bernau near Berlin, which focuses on the provision of online courses and lectures (Massive Open Online Course, MOOC short ) is specialized. In contrast to the U.S. supplier Coursera the platform is working in collaboration with professors who offer individual courses. Languages of instruction for some courses are bilingual in German, English, Russian and Spanish. Some of the courses offered was selected in a competition.
History
Iversity was founded in 2008 by Jonas Liepmann, who was enrolled at that time in the subject Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In its original form iversity was conceived as an alternative to existing learning platforms, which has been used by students and professors. Iversity in 2011 was converted into a limited company and received EXIST funding for technology innovation by the BMWi and the EU. 2012 was the transition to a specialized provider of Massive Open Online Courses ( MOOCs ) and the appointment of Marcus Riecke for co-managing director. He invested together with existing investors, Masoud Kamali and T- Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom AG, the company. 2013 were Marcus Riecke and Hannes dished to managers of iversity. Mid-2013 left Jonas Liepmann the company and in 2013 moved Marcus Riecke in the newly formed Advisory Board. Dr. Jörg Dräger, the executive director of the Centre for Higher Education Development ( CHE) and former Science Senator of Hamburg, has also been appointed to the Advisory Board. Since then, Hannes dished acts as sole managing director.
MOOC Production Fellowship
Iversity 2013, in cooperation with the Donors' Association for German Science a competition, in which 250,000 euros were awarded to promote the production of ten MOOCs. Half of the funding was reserved for German -speaking MOOCs. For the approximately 250 proposed by faculty courses over 100,000 votes were cast in an online vote. The final selection was made by a jury. The jury included, among others, the former Hamburg 's Science Senator Jörg Dräger, Chairman of the Bertelsmann Foundation for Education, Prof. Jürgen Kluge as an expert in innovation management and Prof. Jörn Loviscach, a lecturer in mathematics at the MOOC provider Udacity and - together with Christian Spannagelhaus - main representative of inverted learning in Germany.
Production of courses
The courses offered are created with technical support from iversity, by the professors themselves. In contrast to providers of MOOCs from the USA iversity not focused on collaborations with elite universities, but on the technical and didactic skills of individual teams or high school teacher. Among other classes of groups at the Universities of Tübingen and Kiel and the University of Weihenstephan- Triesdorf offered. University teams to produce MOOCs in non- German-speaking countries exist in Belgium (Catholic University of Leuven ), Italy ( European University Institute ) and Spain. Among the most famous part of the Heidelberg faculty Mathematics Professor Christian Spannagelhaus.
Offered Course topics include: Monte Carlo methods in finance, future of storytelling, Global Governance in the European Union and social entrepreneurship. Participation in MOOCs is free of charge.