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Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations, and Aimin Zhu, University Relations Manager, APAC

Last year, Google and Tsinghua University hosted the 2014 APAC MOOC Focused Faculty Workshop, an event designed to share, brainstorm and generate ideas aimed at fostering MOOC innovation. As a result of the ideas generated at the workshop, we solicited proposals from the attendees for research collaborations that would advance important topics in MOOC development.

After expert reviews and committee discussions, we are pleased to announce the following recipients of the MOOC Focused Research Awards. These awards cover research exploring new interactions to enhance learning experience, personalized learning, online community building, interoperability of online learning platforms and education accessibility:

• “MOOC Visual Analytics” - Michael Ginda, Indiana University, United States
• “Improvement of students’ interaction in MOOCs using participative networks” - Pedro A. Pernías Peco, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
• “Automated Analysis of MOOC Discussion Content to Support Personalised Learning” - Katrina Falkner, The University of Adelaide, Australia
• “Extending the Offline Capability of Spoken Tutorial Methodology” - Kannan Moudgalya, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
• “Launching the Pan Pacific ISTP (Information Science and Technology Program) through MOOCs” - Yasushi Kodama, Hosei University, Japan
• “Fostering Engagement and Social Learning with Incentive Schemes and Gamification Elements in MOOCs” - Thomas Schildhauer, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Germany
• “Reusability Measurement and Social Community Analysis from MOOC Content Users” - Timothy K. Shih, National Central University, Taiwan

In order to further support these projects and foster collaboration, we have begun pairing the award recipients with Googlers pursuing online education research as well as product development teams.

Google is committed to supporting innovation in online learning at scale, and we congratulate the recipients of the MOOC Focused Research Awards. It is our belief that these collaborations will further develop the potential of online education, and we are very pleased to work with these researchers to jointly push the frontier of MOOCs.