OpenupEd Quality label for MOOCs

In January 2014 OpenupEd partners launched a quality label for MOOCs. The OpenupEd label was presented during EMOOCs 2014, in Lausanne and recently during the EFQUEL Innovation Forum Conference in Crete. A paper about the label is submitted for the International Journal for Innovation and Quality in Learning.
Part of the admission process of becoming an OpenupEd partner is that your institution obtains the OpenupEd label upon entry. Institutions with the OpenupEd Label are guided towards improving their performance in e-learning and in opening up education by the use of MOOCs. The "OpenupEd label" focusses on both online and open education.

The MOOCs offered by OpenupEd partners are intended to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning and provide students with a reasonable chance of success in education. This implies 'openness' in the sense not only of no financial cost, but also open accessibility, open licensing policy, freedom of place, pace and time of study, open entry, and open pedagogy.

Next the institutional strategy is related to important benchmarks for online education. It is not expected that every benchmark of the OpenupEd label will be achieved by every institution at start. There is considerable diversity in institutional approaches to opening up education by the use of MOOCs. In our approach, benchmarking is intended as an improvement tool; a process of comparing the institutional performance with best practices as currently understood in the field of MOOCs and open education. This process guides institutions to look critically at their own position and practices, and leads to identification of weaknesses and strengths in comparison to other universities. It will help to define your own institutions ambition and next steps in developing quality MOOCs.