On Monday 14 April 2014, 12 leading universities and companies in 8 European countries announced the launch of the new EMMA project which will provide access to MOOCs in different languages and supported by automatic transcription. The first EMMA MOOCs will go live in September 2014 and are provided by universities in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK on subjects as diverse as Business Management, Social Innovation and Cultural Heritage, Climate Change and Searching on the Internet. Announcing the launch of EMMA today, the project coordinator Rosanna De Rosa said “EMMA provides an exciting opportunity for both students and MOOC providers in Europe to benefit from a simple user-friendly platform that provides unique multilingual access to MOOCs – we are looking forward to rolling out this service in the coming 6 months”. EMMA will operate in two main modes: as an aggregator and hosting system of courses produced by European universities and as a system that enables learners to construct their own learning paths using units from MOOCs as building blocks. Once operational, EMMA will be open for other providers who wish to make their MOOCs available in multiple languages and across borders. Pilots will run in 7 countries with a total of 16 MOOCs and will involve at least 60,000 participants. EMMA is a 30 month pilot action supported by the European Union. EMMA will showcase excellence in innovative teaching methodologies and learning approaches and will offer free, open, online courses in multiple languages from different European universities to help preserve Europe’s rich cultural, educational and linguistic heritage and to promote cross-cultural and multi-lingual learning. For more information about EMMA, contact the EMMA Press office at info@europeanmoocs.eu, visit www.europeanmoocs.eu or follow EMMA on Twitter www.twitter.com/EUmoocs
