Josep A. Planell, recently named president of the UOC, opened the seminar by stressing the controversial subject of massive open online courses (MOOCs), an issue that divides the community of experts in eLearning in terms of their contribution to the sector. Planell stated that "MOOCs shouldn't make us lose sight of what eLearning is: a system that offers greater flexibility, greater interaction, and greater personalization." The president of the UOC concluded, "At a time of low-cost teaching, quality will be the differentiating element."

Martha Stone Wiske, former lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, began the series of presentations by stressing the essence of teaching as a method of construction of knowledge to understand the reality that surrounds us. According to Wiske, today "“… teaching is a passive activity, and we shouldn't forget that the aim of teaching is to create knowledge so that students can apply it. The key to the process is in the execution of this knowledge." Wiske also called for teaching that contemplates the spectrum of multiple intelligences, as defined by her North American colleague Howard Gardner.

The president of the Schools Council of Catalonia, Ferran Ruiz, then took up the baton from Wiske to highlight the important role and influence of the managers of the education sector (administrators, politicians, etc.), who usually act with a managerial mentality, removed from the reality and the problems of teaching. "Today, educational relations are structured more as a product of tradition, teachers, economy, and managerial convenience rather than due to intrinsic requirements of education and learning," Ruiz claimed. "We need a new logic based on individuals." eLearning can provide this redefinition, but "… we need managers capable of looking forwards, predicting, and changing."

Greater training in ICT for educators and students

Sarah Guri-Rosenblit, a researcher at Israel’s Open University, turned the concept of eLearning on its head and looked at it from the point of view of e-teaching as, according to her, there is somewhat of an over-emphasis on the central role of the student in terms of learning models. According to the Israeli teacher, there are other problematic assumptions when tackling teaching with new technologies: Do students really know how to use digital tools in their learning process? Are they able to conduct their own studies independently? Should the role of teachers in the digital age be relegated to that of accompaniment? According to Guri-Rosenblit, new students are skilled in the use of ICT, but they still lack the capacity of critical thought and problem solving in the digital environment. In this point, she stressed the role of teachers and counselors and called for more training in the use of ICT, both for students and for teachers. In addition, she mentioned that MOOCs and open educational resources (OERs) may become useful tools in reducing educators’ workloads, providing they receive proper quality assessment.

Dutch researcher Betty Collis offered an original perspective on eLearning derived from her experience in training in the business environment. Collis worked as a lecturer at the Dutch University of Twente and subsequently for the multinational Shell Oil. She believes that there are some good practices in corporate training that could be extrapolated to the education sector. For example, Collis feels that the business sector works with multidisciplinary teams, of which quick decision-making processes in high-pressure environments are required. This makes "… co-responsibility in the learning of the other members of the team" necessary, an element she claimed is non-existent in traditional educational environments, where the tendency is towards the individualisation of each student's educational process. Collis advocates that for higher education institutions to anticipate this type of professional environment for students, "… they have to change the present view of learning for a process that emphasizes sharing and co-creation of knowledge among a community of professionals."

Terry Anderson, a Canadian researcher at Athabasca University and currently a research fellow of the UOC’s eLearn Center, focused his paper on the efficiency of learning models at a time when cuts in the sector are the order of the day. According to Anderson, "We must improve quality, effectiveness, attraction, cost, and efficiency in times of the learning experience." For this reason, he proposed a model that is less centered on the total interaction among the elements of the learning process (teacher-student-content). For Anderson, "… deep and significant learning can take place providing the level of interaction of the students with one of the other elements is high, be it with the teacher, among themselves, or with the content."