Online learning environments

You can implement your courses in online learning environments as

• blended learning - teaching that combines face-to-face and distance teaching
• online courses
• online courses open to everyone, i.e. MOOCs.

University of Helsinki's Moodle (UH-Moodle) is used in degree teaching and Open University teaching.

If the online course is open to the whole world, the number of participants is not limited and you can participate in the course without registration, it is probably a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Then you can use MOOC Center online learning environment.

In certain cases, you can also use DigiCampus, a joint platform for Finnish higher education institutions.

Read more:

• for planning online courses, see Constructive alignment of teaching and the 10 steps of the course desing
• Differences in online learning environments
• What is a MOOC? See MOOC criteria and support
• University of Helsinki's MOOCs

Moodle is the most widely used online learning environment at the University of Helsinki. Use it when you want an interactive online workspace for degree students or open university courses.

Moodle can be used to support classroom teaching or as a platform for distance learning. Moodle provides the possibility of teaching and learning flexibly as the teaching does not have to be fixed to a certain time and lecture room. With Moodle, you can also implement blended learning - for example, you can make your teaching more flexible with online assignments and partially replace classroom teaching with them.

Among other things, Moodle can be used to

• collect learning tasks and provide feedback on them
• organise online discussions to activate students
• organise examinations with essay questions or multiple choice questions
• supervise and monitor your students’ learning process
• create a Zoom area for an online lecture.

Read more:

• Moodle's update cycle and statistics
• Moodle instructions and support
• How to create a new Moodle course area

The University of Helsinki MOOC Center creates custom online courses in co-operation with teachers and develops there own online learning platform: MOOC.fi. An in-house team of staff and students develops the platform.

The course platform is suitable for your course if you have one of the following goals:

1. Automation: I want to use automatic grading and registration of course completions. Thanks to automation, the platform is also suitable for courses on topics that interest large groups of people.
2. Custom features: I want a specific new feature (such as a new exercise type) for my course. The platform already has many features that enable you to create different kinds of courses. In addition, we can create new features if the degree programme or project has money to cover development costs.

You can find a list of MOOC Center courses in the University of Helsinki course search and the MOOC.fi portal. Introduction to Sustainability and Uncover Finnish Education are good examples of courses created on the platform.

• Read a more detailed description of the features of the platform on the MOOC.fi website. 
• You can find detailed instructions for using the platform in the platform wiki. 

If you are interested in the platform, get in touch with the MOOC Center: mooc@cs.helsinki.fi.

DigiCampus is a Moodle-based online learning environment shared by Finnish higher education institutions. DigiCampus offers courses for cooperation projects of networks and different organizations.DigiCampus also has some MOOC courses (Massive Online Open Courses). You can organise courses on DigiCampus if the University of Helsinki’s other learning environments are not suitable for your course. 

When can I get an area on DigiCampus?

• The course is not open to everyone and includes participants from outside higher education institutions (e.g., school teachers) for whom, for some reason, cannot be issued university's limited user accounts.
• The participants do not have credentials from any European higher education institution, or the EduGain login does not work, and for some reason, participants cannot be issued university's limited user accounts.
• The course is a collaborative course between higher education institutions, and a neutral learning environment is desired for it.
• In question is a project or network coordinated by the University of Helsinki. The courses require their own separate space within the learning environment, which the project coordinator manages themselves.

• DigiCampus has certain features that are not available in UH-Moodle and that are essential for running the course.

  If any of these criteria are met, you can apply for a DigiCampus space using the application form.
  
  More information:

• Differences in online learning environments
• DigiCampus Support pages