Dear Learning Community,

We have updated our Course Program in 2019! New to the program are Human-Centered Design: Building and Testing Prototypes (starting on August 28, 2019) and Data Engineering und Data Science – Klarheit in den Schlagwort-Dschungel (starting on October 23, 2019 in German). You can register for these courses starting now!

In March, the first MOOC looks at the subject of "Patentrecht: So schützen Sie Ihre Innovation" (starting on March 6, 2019 in German). In this two-week workshop, lawyers Dr. Czychowski and Dr. Valvoda illustrate who is typically the owner of a software development, which parallels exist between patents and open source, and how you can protect your creative idea.

You can enroll in this course here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/it-recht2019

Don't miss the following events next week:

On February 20, the two-week workshop "Digitale Identitäten - Wer bin ich im Netz?" is starting (in German). We all want to defend ourselves from identity theft, but how? In this free online course, Prof. Meinel leads you on your way to safe password storage. Your confirmation of participation enables you together with the other two confirmations of participation in the courses "Datensicherheit im Netz" and "Blockchain - Sicherheit auch ohne Trust Center" (both in German), which you can still attain, to take the exam "Cybersecurity Basics" in May. Thereby you can earn a Record of Achievement or qualified certificate, which is normally only possible in six-week courses.

Interested? Then please enroll in the course here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/identities2019

Educational Innovation at the Didacta

Whoever doesn't feel that conventional educational institutions have prepared them adequately for digitalization, will find more and more customized online courses on the Internet, which are even available free of charge. This is the focus of the Potsdam Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) at the educational fair Didacta 2019, which will take place from February 19 to February 23 in Cologne. Besides openHPI, in hall 6.1 (booth C050 D051) the institute presents its mobile recording system tele-TASK and another educational innovation, which will be made ready for the use at HPI: the HPI Schul-Cloud. With the HPI Schul-Cloud, pupils, teachers and parents gain easy access to learning and teaching materials, which are available everywhere and anytime. The solution will provide the technical basis for using recent digital teaching and learning content in every subject - as simple as apps are usable via smartphones or tablet PCs.

Current Episodes of the HPI Podcast (in German)

Have you already listened to the HPI Knowledge Podcast? Most recently it dealt with one of the most requested jobs in the digital era - Data Scientists - and digital health ("Siri, ist mein Blutdruck normal?"). The fourth episode will be published in a few days.

We hope that these topics are of interest to you.

Best regards The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We hope you had a good start in a peaceful and healthy new year! We have made provisions so that it won't get boring: Look forward to a diverse openHPI course program 2019!

A New Year - A New Course!

After two workshops on Cybersecurity (in German) we will have a deeper look at Data Centers. Offerings such as Amazon Webservices (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and most web pages available on the Internet offer easy-to-use services to consumers. But what is required to deliver these services? The HPI Future Soc Lab Team will explain the various requirements necessary to deliver the service in this 2-week course. The course starts on March 6, 2019.

Are you interested? Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/futuresoc2018

On March 20, learners can look forward to an online course on Design Thinking. Under the heading "Beyond Brockhaus Thinking - With Design Thinking to a Networked Culture", Prof. Uli Weinberg and Dr. Claudia Nicolai will give an introduction to the core principles of Design Thinking and inspire to actively use Design Thinking at the organizational level.

Here you can enroll to the course: https://open.hpi.de/courses/designthinking2019

What about the User Experience on openHPI?

In 2018, we introduced a couple of new functions to openHPI which learners are now able to fully enjoy. Both in front and behind the scenes, a lot of things have changed. An external evaluation of the user experience has shown that the platform is in a good position and we have already realized many of the recommendations. We would be happy if you took some time to answer a couple of questions on your personal experience with the platform. Thank you!

To participate in the survey please click this link: https://tools.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=241741&newtest=Y&lang=en

Reminder: Big Annual Survey

Until January 18 our big annual MOOC survey is running (in English). A big thank you to everyone who has participated so far!

If you have not yet taken the survey, we would appreciate if you do so under the following link: https://tools.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=487211&newtest=Y&lang=en. With your feedback you help us to improve the openHPI courses and the platform.

Best regards
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

The year is coming to an end, and we would like to take the opportunity to thank all who have actively been a part of the openHPI community.

Big Year-End Survey

We would like to know more about how helpful and sustainable our online courses are for our learners daily lives. We have therefore created a year-end survey and would be very grateful if as many of you as possible could participate. The survey takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Thank you very much in advance. With your participation you help us to improve the platform and especially the certification process.

Click here to go to the survey: https://tools.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=487211&newtest=Y&lang=en

New Courses on openHPI

For those who have not yet seen it, last week, we released the openHPI course program for 2019 with lots of new courses.
Besides a series of workshops on the topic of the “Basics of Cybersecurity,” we are looking forward to focusing on issues such as design thinking, intercultural teamwork, 50 years of Internet, and patent law. Furthermore, we are happy to offer a junior course entitled “How to program my first mini-computer,” which addresses young people who are 13 and older in particular.
Some courses will be added within the coming weeks and during the course of the next year. It is therefore worth your while to regularly check the openHPI website. We hope you enjoy browsing the courses and discovering those of interest to you!

Unchartered Waters – The HPI Knowledge Podcast (in German)

Last but not least, we’d like to mention our new podcast series, which kicks off HPI’s 20th anniversary celebration.
We start on January 9th with the title “Digital New Territory – The HPI Knowledge Podcast.” Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel will present the new format which picks up exciting topics from HPI. Every two weeks you can listen to a new program on https://hpi.de/medien/podcast.html. The series will be moderated by Leon Stebe, the reporter of Inforadio-News.

We wish you happy holidays and a great new year!
The openHPI Team

During a glittering gala evening at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London, Christian Willems, CTO of openHPI, was awarded Bronze as “Learning Developer of the Year”. The award represents the industry’s highest recognition for achievements in the field of learning technologies. The 45-member independent jury is made up of leading experts in learning and development.

Christian’s pioneering work has been decisive in shaping the MOOC platforms openHPI and openSAP. With enthusiasm and an abundance of good ideas, he leads a team of developers, PhD candidates, and students at the chair of Internet Technologies and Systems.

In recent years, Christian has developed a range of innovative features, which have not only advanced digital learning in the world of academics but also in that of business. “It is extremely helpful that we have a double perspective in our project – on the one hand we develop the platform itself, and on the other hand we are the openHPI course providers and can thus experience firsthand if something is not working optimally,” Christian said. At the same time, he underscores the team effort: “It is completely clear that this award goes to the entire team. Only with the bright minds here at HPI and our exciting innovation partners, such as openSAP, have we been able to come so far.”

We congratulate Christian on this amazing success and are very proud and happy to have him in our team!

Dear Learning Community,

Today, we would like to present you our new mainframes course (in English) and introduce two new platform features which will hopefully make learning with our platform even more exciting.

The Role of Mainframes for Business Life

We would like to invite you to our new English online course “Mainframe – Crucial Role in Modern Enterprise Computing,” which starts on November 5. Prof. Andreas Polze (HPI), Prof. Philipp Brune (University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm) and Wolfram Greis (European Mainframe Academy) will lead you through the topic. In addition, manufacturer such as Fujitsu and IBM will contribute video lectures.

What is the course about?
Participants can expect an comprehensive and compact introduction to the mainframe technology with the aim of increasing its popularity. The course instructors want to illustrate that mainframes are a modern and future-oriented technology which provides some USPs compared to other platforms. Most people use mainframes in their daily life without being aware of it: Transactions such as withdrawals at a cash machine, credit card payments, and flight bookings are processed in the background securely and reliably by mainframes. Mainframes are also at work when the tax consultant service DATEV prepares 13 million wage and salary statements per month.

Who should attend the course?
The online course addresses everyone who is interested in the topic and brings with them prior knowledge in computer science and algorithms. We would like to address particularly young people who are currently undergoing training or studying.

Good to know
Please estimate a workload of about 6 to 8 hours per week. In addition to the regular record of achievement, participants can earn a qualified certificate in this course. The Hasso Plattner Institute recommends to other universities the allocation of two credit points for the certificate of achievement. In last year’s German mainframe course more than 4,200 participants were enrolled.

Interested? Then please enroll in the course here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/mainframes2018

New Features on openHPI

We are happy to announce two new platform features, which are now activated.

Preliminary Score
All of you who until now waited impatiently for the publication of their test results, can look forward to this new feature. For all graded tests (weekly assignments, final exam) we changed the procedure. That means, when you submit your answers, you’ll instantly see your preliminary score, so you no longer have to wait until the deadline has passed. Details regarding the individual questions and explanations will be shown after the deadline has ended as usual.

Timeline Tip
Until now, you could only see the general deadlines for the courses you’d enrolled in on the dashboard, and the course-specific deadlines on the course details page. Now, you can see them with a timeline tip on the learning pages too. Just click on the alarm clock at the top right, and a drop down menu with all important dates will open.

Have fun learning! We are looking forward to your feedback and hope to see you soon in the course.

Best regards
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

The programming language Ruby was introduced in 1995 with the aim of combining the best of both worlds: the world of functional programming and that of imperative programming. The programming environment Ruby on Rails enjoys great popularity, and it is used to develop fast, new Internet applications. On October 1, we start our new openHPI course Programming with Ruby (in German). We look forward to seeing you there!

What it’s about
In Week 1 you’ll learn to understand the syntax and the most important constructs of Ruby. In Week 2, participants will learn how to write actual classes. Furthermore, the course team explains how to write small, but useful programs into the command line (input, output, the reading and writing of files). In Week 3, participants are shown how bigger programs in Ruby are structured and split and how external libraries (so called Gems) can be integrated.

After taking this course you should be able to read Ruby Code and understand the syntax, try out the language on an interactive console, write scripts and smaller Ruby programs yourself, as well as structure and split bigger programs.

Who should attend the course?
Participants should already have experience in programming in other languages to successfully follow the course. Furthermore basic knowledge in English is useful as the key words of the programming language are in English.

Good to know
Like other openHPI programming courses, this course is very practical and contains a great many practical tasks. Upon successful completion of the course you will receive a certificate. Please estimate a workload of about 3 to 6 hours per week.

You can hardly wait to start programming? Then enroll here at: https://open.hpi.de/courses/ruby2018

Best regards,
The openHPI Team

The openHPI team has examined where most of our learners, and especially the most active ones, come from.

The result: The majority of our 175,000 participants come from about 60 large cities all over Germany. But also in 15 German cities with less than 100,000 inhabitants, we noticed an important concentration of active online learners who use our courses on current issues in IT and innovation.

In this analysis of the regional use of openHPI, we not only looked at the absolute number of openHPI users per city, but related this value to the entire population of this city. In that way, we found out, for example, that the density of learners (i.e., the number of single learners per 1,000 inhabitants) is between 6.4 (Heidelberg) and 1.3 (Duisburg).

At the same time, it could be that a large city has relatively high number of openHPI learners, but they exhibit a low level of activity on the platform. We therefore calculated another indicator, which targets the actual learning activity per 1,000 inhabitants. Learning activities are calculated according to clicks on learning videos, self-tests, graded assignments, exams, and forum posts. Here, regarding learning activity the values are shown to be between 904 (Heidelberg) and 164 (Erfurt).

German cities with the highest concentration of openHPI users

As of April 2018

Position	City	openHPI learners per 1000 residents
1.	Heidelberg	6,4
2.	Mannheim	5,5
3.	Karlsruhe	4,6
4.	Stuttgart	4,6
5.	Mainz	4,5
6.	Frankfurt/Main	4,4
7.	Darmstadt	3,9
8.	Bonn	3,8
9.	Erlangen	3,8
10.	Jena	3,4
11.	Saarbrücken	3,2
12.	Koblenz	3,2
13.	Berlin	3,1
14.	Wiesbaden	3,1
15.	Fürth	3,1
16.	Braunschweig	3,0
17.	Heilbronn	3,0
18.	Kaiserslautern	2,9
19.	München	2,9
20.	Leverkusen	2,8
21.	Ulm	2,6
22.	Pforzheim	2,6
23.	Dresden	2,5
24.	Ingolstadt	2,5
25.	Bochum	2,5
26.	Aachen	2,4
27.	Augsburg	2,4
28.	Paderborn	2,4
29.	Düsseldorf	2,3
30.	Nürnberg	2,3
31.	Oldenburg	2,3
32.	Bergisch-Gladbach	2,3
33.	Neuss	2,3
34.	Hannover	2,2
35.	Ludwigshafen	2,2
36.	Münster	2,2
37.	Kiel	2,1
38.	Göttingen	2,1
39.	Hagen	2,1
40.	Regensburg	2,0
41.	Köln	1,9
42.	Hamburg	1,9
43.	Essen	1,9
44.	Bielefeld	1,9
45.	Mülheim/Ruhr	1,9
46.	Freiburg	1,9
47.	Gelsenkirchen	1,9
48.	Rostock	1,8
49.	Leipzig	1,8
50.	Halle	1,8
51.	Kassel	1,8
52.	Dortmund	1,8
53.	Chemnitz	1,8
54.	Erfurt	1,8
55.	Bremen	1,7
56.	Wuppertal	1,7
57.	Oberhausen	1,6
58.	Lübeck	1,5
59.	Magdeburg	1,4
60.	Mönchengladbach	1,3
61.	Duisburg	1,3

Further remarks

• Potsdam, as home of HPI, is not included in the table due to the skewed extremely high number of openHPI learners
  
• In the case of same value, the number of learning activities (clicks on learning videos, self-tests, graded assignments, exams, etc.) decided on which place the city takes

The most active learners live in these German cities

Position	City	openHPI learning activities per 1000 residents
1.	Heidelberg	904
2.	Karlsruhe	895
3.	Mannheim	858
4.	Berlin	754
5.	Stuttgart	685
6.	Mainz	677
7.	Bonn	649
8.	Darmstadt	616
9.	Saarbrücken	584
10.	Kaiserslautern*	572
11.	Frankfurt/Main	565
12.	Koblenz	499
13.	Braunschweig	484
14.	München	475
15.	Erlangen	466
16.	Ulm	452
17.	Wiesbaden	428
18.	Kiel	418
19.	Dresden	401
20.	Heilbronn	371
21.	Jena	370
22.	Magdeburg	358
23.	Köln	350
24.	Hamburg	348
25.	Ingolstadt	346
26.	Düsseldorf	344
27.	Nürnberg	341
28.	Aachen	337
29.	Oldenburg	313
30.	Bergisch-Gladbach	305
31.	Pforzheim	304
32.	Göttingen	296
33.	Bremen	294
34.	Hannover	289
35.	Bochum	285
36.	Ludwigshafen**	282
37.	Essen	282
38.	Bielefeld	276
39.	Rostock	275
40.	Mülheim/Ruhr	272
41.	Fürth**	271
42.	Leipzig	271
43.	Augsburg	269
44.	Leverkusen**	264
45.	Regensburg	264
46.	Münster	257
47.	Freiburg	254
48.	Halle	251
49.	Kassel	239
50.	Dortmund	237
51.	Neuss	234
52.	Mönchengladbach	232
53.	Paderborn	229
54.	Hagen	220
55.	Lübeck	217
56.	Gelsenkirchen	215
57.	Wuppertal**	201
58.	Duisburg	201
59.	Chemnitz	188
60.	Oberhausen	169
61.	Erfurt	164

Southwest Germany leading in digital learning

Both rankings of 61 German cities where HPI e-learning offers are most widely used show large cities in southwest Germany leading the way. One reason for the high number of learning activities and the high density of participants per 1,000 inhabitants may be the concentration of prestigious IT companies and institutes.

We can also see this tendency clearly in the following table, which is categorized by city:

City	Learning activities on openHPI per 1000 residents	Number of openHPI learners per 1000 residents
Heidelberg	Position 1: 904	Position 1: 6,4
Karlsruhe	Position 2: 895	Position 3: 4,6
Mannheim	Position 3: 858	Position 2: 5,5
Stuttgart	Position 5: 685	Position 4: 4,6
Mainz	Position 6: 677	Position 5: 4,5
Darmstadt	Position 8: 616	Position 7: 3,9
Saarbrücken	Position 9: 584	Position 11: 3,2
Kaiserslautern*	Position 10: 572	Position 18: 2,9
Frankfurt/Main	Position 11: 565	Position 6: 4,4
Koblenz	Position 12: 499	Position 12: 3,2
Ulm	Position 16: 452	Position 21: 2,6
Wiesbaden	Position 17: 428	Position 14: 3,1
Heilbronn	Position 20: 371	Position 17: 3,0
Pforzheim	Position 31: 304	Position 22: 2,6
Ludwigshafen	Position 36: 282	Position 35: 2,2
Freiburg	Position 47: 254	Position 46: 1,9

International cities with high numbers of openHPI learners

Looking overseas, we see an especially high concentration of openHPI learners in the Indian cities of Bangalore, Mumbai, Neu Delhi, and Hyderabad a high concentration of openHPI learners. openHPI courses are offered not only in German, but also in English and Chinese.

City	Number of openHPI users
Bangalore	1.844
Wien	1.205
Mumbai	877
London	798
Sydney	779
Zürich	691
Neu Delhi	682
Newtown Square (USA)	657
Hyderabad	594
Amsterdam	517
Singapur	394
Paris	371
Dublin	304
Moskau	287
Salzburg	231
Mexico City	212
Bukarest, Mountain View (USA), je	207
Dubai	138

The leaders among European cities are Vienna, London, and Zurich. Cities at the bottom of the list include Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, Moscow, Salzburg, and Bucharest.

Liebe Lerngemeinschaft,

am 19. September lädt das HPI führende MOOC- und E-Learning-Experten zu einem Erfahrungsaustausch nach Potsdam ein.

Bei dem jährlichen Netzwerktreffen stehen Vorträge und Workshops zu den neuesten Entwicklungen im Bereich E-Learning und Datenanalyse auf dem Programm. Außerdem berichten Partnerfirmen und –organisationen wie SAP, Signavio und die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) über die Erfahrungen mit ihren eigenen Online-Bildungsplattformen.

Den Hauptvortrag hält in diesem Jahr die Direktorin der französischen Internet-Bildungsplattform FUN-Campus, Catherine Mongenet. Alle Informationen zum Programm und zur Anmeldung finden Sie unter: https://hpi.de/veranstaltungen/hpi-veranstaltungen/2018/openhpi-forum-2018.html

Wir freuen uns, Sie auf dem Forum zu begrüßen.

Schöne Grüße
das openHPI-Team

Dear Learning Community,

We hope you had a relaxing summer. We are getting ready for our fall program, which will begin in a month. openHPI will be offering three exciting courses: Basics of Algorithms, Java Capstone, and the second part of our Design Thinking MOOC.

Basics of Algorithms (in German) – Begins September 10

What it’s about
The role that algorithms play in computer science is similar to the role that the human brain plays in language. If you want to acquire a better understanding of the basic elements of computer science, you are in the right place. Dr. Timo Kötzing and his team will show you, for example, how algorithms control search engine results, how they can help to identify a forged coin efficiently by its incorrect weight, or how algorithms are able to find the shortest route to your destination. You will learn what quantifiers and connectives are and what is meant by formalization and specifications.

Who should attend the course?
This course was created for individuals who are thinking about studying computer science, as well as anyone who wants to acquire a better understanding of the principles behind common software programs. With a basic knowledge of mathematic (secondary level), you should be able to complete the course successfully. If you enjoy solving logical problems and puzzles, even better.

Good to know
This is the second iteration of this course. Based on last year’s experiences and feedback from the participants, the researchers have extensively revised the course and extended it by one week. You should plan to spend 3 to 6 hours per week on this course in order to complete it successfully. You can receive a confirmation of participation and a graded confirmation of participation for this course. Participation in the course and exam is free.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/mat-ws2018

Java Capstone Series Pt. 1 (in English) – Begins September 10

What it’s about
Programming fans and Java enthusiasts, bear in mind: With the Java Capstone series we want to try out a new course format – fewer videos and more hands-on activities. In our first sequence, you will program a simple game on your own or in a team (e.g., Pong or BreakOut).

Good to know
To complete this course successfully, basic Java knowledge is required. You can learn basic Java in our Java introductory courses (https://open.hpi.de/courses/javaeinstieg2017 or https://open.hpi.de/courses/javaintro2018). Both courses are still available for self-study. In the Java Capstone you can receive a graded confirmation of participation. Participation in the course and exam is free.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/java-capstone-1

Human-Centered Design – From Synthesis to Creative Ideas (in English) – Begins September 19

What it’s about
Everyone who is looking forward to the next Design Thinking MOOC can take a deep breath. From September 19 to October 24, Karen von Schmieden, Mana Taheri and Lena Mayer will be back on openHPI. Whereas in their first course the focus was on observation and interview techniques which help you understand users’ needs, in this follow-up course they demonstrate how to find creative ideas to develop user-friendly products and services.

Good to know
We welcome everyone who wants to come up with completely new ideas in their daily lives as well as anyone who needs to develop new products in their jobs. In this course you can receive a confirmation of participation and a record of achievement. Participation in the course and exam is free.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/ideas2018

We are looking forward to seeing you in our courses soon!

Best regards
The openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We cordially invite you to our 2-week online workshop “Blockchain – Hype or Innovation” (in German), which starts on July 2.

What it’s about
Blockchain has become a popular buzzword. While some see blockchain as an all-purpose weapon with limited access, others visualize it as a hacker technology for secret deals in the darknet,” says Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel, summing up the latest discussions. In this course we would like to help you to form your own point of view on blockchain technology and to get a better understanding of the real innovation potential of blockchain.

In the first week of this compact summer course Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel, head of the chair for Internet Technologies and Systems, and Tatiana Gayvoronskaya, PhD student at HPI, will introduce the architecture and the operating principles of the blockchain technology. Participants will learn about strengths and challenges of blockchain. In the second week, we will focus on use cases and areas of application and show some known blockchain projects.

Who should attend the course?
The course targets everyone who is interested in the blockchain topic . No prior knowledge is necessary.

Good to know
You should plan a time allotment of 3 to 6 hours per week to complete the course successfully. In this course you can receive a confirmation of participation and a graded confirmation of participation. Participation in the course and exam is free.

Did we spark your interest? Then enroll now on https://open.hpi.de/courses/blockchain2018

We look forward to seeing you in the course and to finding out your opinion on blockchain.

Best regards
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

The Internet of Things compels us to think about new data communication regulations. In the 2-week online course “IPv6 in Modern Networks” (in German), which begins on June 11, network expert Wilhelm Boeddinghaus will explain to us the Internet protocol which is the new standard for data exchange in the network of networks.

What it’s about
With the growing number of devices communicating through the Internet, we will soon need many more addresses than those presently available in the current standard. No matter if we look at home automation, transport, or medicine – in numerous areas things communicate with other things over the Internet. For just one device, often a number of sensors feed their data into the network. To enable the Internet to grow even more, the new Internet protocol IPv6 was introduced which provides a lot more addresses than the former IPv4 protocol.

In this course, Wilhelm Boeddinghaus explains the technical basics for the introduction of the new Internet protocol, and he clarifies where we get the addresses from and how they are structured. Furthermore, he shows the concrete steps that need to be taken to define a strategy for successfully implementing IPv6.

Who should attend the course?
The course primarily targets network experts and system administrators from companies, public authorities, and academic institutions.

Good to know
You should plan a time allotment of 3 hours per week to complete the course successfully. In this course you can receive a confirmation of participation and a record of achievement (further information about the certificates). Participation in the course and exam is free.

Did we spark your interest? Then enroll now on https://open.hpi.de/courses/ipv6-2018.

Best regards,
The openHPI team

More than 200 guests from business, science and politics discussed the future of digital learning with scientists from the German Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) at the HPI MOOC Symposium on 4 and 5 April in New York.

At the Symposium at the Hudson Yards office, researcher David Joyner of the Georgia Institute of Technology spoke in favor of developing new methods that allow participants in open online courses to quickly retrieve the content they have learned.

During the symposium, David Joyner reported that learners occasionally have misunderstandings and that is especially important in the so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) to frequently review what they have learned. Lee Rubenstein, vice president of Business Development at the edOC MOOC platform, said it was critical for digital learners to be able to access their course from anywhere, via any device: "The learners need to be able to access courses from anywhere and on any device. Whatever we want the learners to do, we must put the opportunity in front of them."

Justin Reich, Managing Director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported on initial research results on learning in open online courses: "If you set all metrics in relationship to each other, such as points achieved, number of quizzes taken, high activity in the forum, etc., everything is possibly related to each other". From this, the e-learning scientist concluded that whoever is willing to learn a lot, will also use more and more content. Regarding the necessity of the evaluation of the learning data, Reich said: "You can collect lots and lots of data and still not know anything about the learners."

Also American business representatives were interested in the latest research results and practical examples around digital learning. Karen Deal from Newport News Shipbuilding said: "Our company is undergoing a digital transformation and I‘m looking for solutions to accelerate learning so that we can adopt new technologies and new processes, so this symposium just opens up a lot of opportunity to be able to accelerate, not just limp along and teach people a few things, but to get them to learn together."

John Queenan, founder of Charged Up, praised the HPI symposium as a place where he was able to experience: "some great thinkers in terms of how to make learning more effective and have a greater impact on society." For young entrepreneur Joan Ai, who is currently creating a start-up in the NYU Steinhardt EdTech Incubator, the symposium of the Potsdam Institute was an enriching experience: "Not only did I learn so much about MOOCs, but also how MOOCs would be applicable to my business and the educational space in general."

At the symposium, HPI researchers presented innovative technologies that are increasingly changing the way people use open online courses. "We were able to successfully demonstrate how newly developed MOOC technologies can improve the experience of learning and innovation processes as well as cooperation in and between organizations," commented Prof. Christoph Meinel, Director of the HPI Institute in Potsdam.

The German HPI had taken up the USA MOOC trend in 2011 as the first educational institution in Europe and as a pioneer for German e-learning and has further developed it since 2012. At the New York Symposium in the SAP Leonardo Center, HPI scientists presented the peculiarities of their Internet education platform, openHPI. It also presented what distinguishes the two partner platforms of the World Health Organization WHO and the software group SAP. The symposium was also about analyzing, understanding and designing digital learning processes. In particular, aspects such as the evaluation of learning data and the use of game-typical elements to increase learning motivation and stamina were discussed as well as the future of open online courses for everyone.

Dear Learning Community,

In April we will be offering two new courses on openHPI: Information Service Engineering (in English), a course on natural language processing and a course on IT Law for Software Developers (in German). This course will introduce some of the most recent developments in data protection.

Information Service Engineering – Begins on April 16

What it’s about?
In this 6-week course (in English) participants will learn the fundamentals of natural language processing as well as the basics of Linked Data-based knowledge representation. The course will be taught by Harald Sack, who was a senior researcher at the HPI for many years and is currently a professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). In today's world, access to and availability of information are almost unlimited. As a result, we need search engines and intelligent programs to process these vast amounts of data. It is crucial to achieve ever more precise, more complete, and more reliable results when searching for and linking knowledge. This is achieved, for example, by systems that detect and correct errors. In this course, Prof. Sack and his colleague, Dr. Maria Koutraki will introduce methods that enable the transition from raw data to well-structured knowledge. ”We will demonstrate how natural language texts can be analyzed using statistical models and machine learning, and how this information can be described with the help of formal knowledge representation.” Prof. Sack explains. He will also show how automated image and video analysis function, how handwritten messages are translated into machine-readable language, and how computers programs are able to read printed texts.

Who should attend the course?
This course addresses students of computer science, data and web scientists, and anyone who is interested in the combination of semantic search and machine learning.

Good to know
In addition to the regular record of achievement, participants can earn a qualified certificate in this course. The Hasso Plattner Institute recommends to other universities the allocation of two credit points for the certificate of achievement.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/semanticweb2017

IT Law for Software Developers – Begins on April 9

What it’s about
Prof. Christian Czychowski and Dr. Anselm Brandi-Dohrn teach at HPI and will introduce 11 topics that are essential when developing computer programs. In this 4-week course (in German), participants will get to know the contractual arrangements for the aspects of false self-employment and transfer of rights. Furthermore, the course provides you with basic knowledge about contracts in the IT sector, in copyright, trademark, and patent law, in data protection law, and in company sales. Last but not least, the teachers will point out the changes and challenges that will result from the new EU data protection regulation.

Who should attend the course?
The course is open for everyone who is interested in IT law in the field of software development. No prior knowledge required.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/it-recht2018

We look forward to seeing you in the course. If you haven’t found a course that suits your needs, please have a look at our partner platform mooc.house. On April 23, acatech and Accenture will offer a course on smart services (in German). In this MOOC, they will introduce smart services, technological enablers, smart service business models and their impact on company organization.

Best regards
The openHPI Team

openHPI goes NY!

The openHPI team will make its first trip to NYC in April 2018. In a two-day symposium, we will share our research and innovative developments at HPI’s New York offices, which were opened in April 2017.

On the first day of the symposium, we will present features, innovations and user experiences from HPI’s innovative MOOC platform as well as some of our partners’ platforms, including openSAP and openWHO. The second day will be dedicated to current research questions, such as learning analytics, gamification, and MOOC completion rates. In addition to the HPI presenters, well-known researchers like Justin Reich (MIT), Prof. Neil Heffernan (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) and David A. Joyner (Georgia Tech) will provide us with insights into their recent projects.

We are looking forward to a lively exchange with our American colleagues, engaging presentations, and interactive workshops as well as many inspiring moments in the Big Apple!

We would like to welcome anyone who is interested in MOOCs and MOOC research to join us for this free event. Additional information and the registration form can be found here: https://events.sap.com/us/sap-hpi-mooc-event/en/home

Dear Learning Community,

Welcome back! Don’t miss our 6-week course Internet Security for Beginners (in English) starting on Monday.

What it’s about
With the widespread use of the Internet (in the meantime, nearly 4 billion people are connected online), cybercrime is unfortunately also increasing. Maybe, you have already experienced an attack yourself. For instance, have you lost important data through a computer virus? Or had your credit card hacked when shopping online? In this introductory course, led by Prof. Christoph Meinel, we want to show you how the Internet works and why it is insecure by reason of design. In this course you will also get to know different types of malware and learn more about the tracks you leave behind online. We will explain why the Internet is such an attractive target for hackers and advise you on how to protect yourself from the risks in the Internet. Register now!

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/intsec2018

Who should attend the course
In general, the course is open to anyone who surfs the Internet, no matter if for private or professional reasons. Prior knowledge is not necessary.

Good to know
Besides the regular record of achievement, participants can earn a qualified certificate in this course. The Hasso Plattner Institute recommends to other universities the allocation of two credit points for the certificate of achievement.
The estimated time required for the course is between three and six hours a week.

We look forward to seeing you in the course!

Best regards
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We hope that you had a good start in the new year and look forward to accompanying you through many exciting courses. We would like to briefly present the first 3 of them - Linux for Everyone, Internet Security for Beginners, and Intrapreneurship - Make your Business great again.

Linux for Everyone (in German) - Course start on February 12

Unhappy with Windows or just interested in an alternative? In this 2-week workshop (in German) we will guide you step by step through the installation process of the Linux distribution Ubuntu, showing you how to configurate it and use programs. Besides practical use examples, we will also present the history and the context of the free software movement. Prior knowledge is not necessary.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/linux2018

Internet Security for Beginners (in English) - Course start on February 26

Already in the Sixties, American researchers were able to not only use computers as blunt calculating machines but to connect them to a broad network. This was the start of the Internet which, in the meantime, connects nearly four billion people and around 23 billion devices, (e.g., computers, smartphones and sensors). The network of networks has therefore become an attractive target for criminals. Around four million attacks are registered every day, (i.e., 50 per second). Although the economic damage around the globe is immense - and we are talking about 400 billion US dollar per year - only a small amount of resources is spent on Internet security.

In the 6-week course, Internet Security for Beginners (in English), learn the methods hackers use to break into computers and networks and how you can protect yourself. We show you typical attack scenarios, explain how data is transmitted on the Internet, and reveal the tracks we leave behind when we use our smartphones. Protect your digital identity and understand how the confidentiality of your data can be guaranteed. No previous knowledge required.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/intsec2018

Intrapreneurship - Make your Business great again (in English) - Course start on February 26

Does this situation sound familiar? You have a great business idea, but do not dare to bear the risk alone and leave your current job. In this 6-week course (in English) learn how people with entrepreneurial spirit have changed a company and developed new products - even if the signs were bad in the beginning. We present you with the intrapreneurship concept and tools to support you in realizing your idea. You can look forward to illustrative field reports (e.g. by Bosch, SAP, AVL List and Signavio), a large tool box containing more than 20 tools—from the Ansoff matrix to the minimal viable product (MVP) and the stakeholder map, and practical exercises where you can directly use your newly acquired knowledge.

The course was created in a cooperation between the University of Economics Cracow, the FH Joanneum Graz, AVL List GmbH, and the HPI Potsdam. It was realized under the umbrella of the EU-funded project BizMOOC.

Please enroll here: https://mooc.house/courses/bizmooc2018

We are looking forward to seeing you in the courses!

Best regards
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We are looking back on a busy and successful year 2017 full of new participants, inspirational discussions, exciting conferences and a lot of new platform features. Many thanks to all of you who have accompanied and supported us on this way!

We would like to ask you for your assistance one last time this year.
We would be happy to learn about your opinion on the automatically translated subtitles.
We have provided one example and a few questions which will take around 2-3 minutes of your time. Thank you in advance!
https://blog.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=427692&lang=en

The openHPI team says goodbye for this year. Maybe you like to use these calm days to browse through the openHPI program for 2018. We are particularly excited to announce another course at short notice, which was realized in cooperation with several European partners and has a business focus. "Intrapreneurship - Make your Business great again" starts in February 26 and addresses everyone who wants to learn about the concept of intrapreneurship and how to realize ideas and projects within a company.

We wish you relaxing days and hope to see you again next year!

Best regards
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

The waiting is finally over. This week, the openHPI courses for the coming year have been published online. Besides some familiar content, we have also included new topics in our program. Take a look and enroll right away. Because, as you know, anticipation is half the fun!

This is what awaits you:

• We start with the two-week workshop Linux for Everyone (in German), which introduces the open source operating system Linux, which has made a name for itself as a free alternative to Windows. This course was created at the suggestion of our openHPI learners. They had requested a course on this topic in last year's Advent MOOC.
  
• We are also delighted to offer Prof. Meinel's course on Internet Security (now in English). In this six-week course you will learn the fundamentals of Internet security and which dangers and points of attack lie in the Internet. Furthermore, you will get advice on how to protect yourself from cyberattacks.
  
• This is followed by the four-week course, IT Law for Software Developers (in German), conducted by Prof. Christian Czychowski and Dr. Anselm Brandi-Dohrn, some of you may already know them from the 2016 course of the same name. This updated version of the course is supplemented by a few topics that will introduce you to the areas of copyright, patent law, data protection and contracts.
  
• In the six-week Information Service Engineering course (in English) taught by Prof. Harald Sack, you'll learn the basics of natural language processing, knowledge mining, linked data engineering, as well as information retrieval required for the development of information services.
  
• Object-Oriented Programming in Java was one of our crowd-pleasers this year. In 2018, the four-week course will again be linked to an exciting story, but this time in English, on our partner platform openSAP.
  
• Computer science is largely based on mathematical principles. In the three-week workshop Introduction to the Mathematics of Algorithms (in German), you will find a selection of exciting topics and contents that are indispensable for getting started on a scientific examination of mathematics and algorithms.
  
• In Prof. Döllner’s six-week course Automated Visual Software Analytics (in English) we explore how the effectiveness of software development projects can be pro-actively improved by applying concepts, techniques, and tools from software diagnosis.
  
• The programming language Ruby has made a name for itself, not least of all because of the success of the web framework Ruby on Rails. Look forward to the two-week workshop Programming with Ruby (in German), in which we would like to introduce you to this elegant and expressive programming language.
  
• The culmination is the six-week Enterprise Computing course (in English), which will be offered by Prof. Polze in cooperation with the Academic Mainframe Consortium. After the success of the last mainframe MOOC in summer 2017, the course team would also like to make this topic available to an international audience. This course is intended as an introduction to the topic and will, for example, shed light on questions of mainframe architecture, application development or the storage management.

You can find the complete list of courses here.

Winter greetings,
Your openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

Our competition “My favorite learning place” has just ended, and our jury of openHPI team members, students and design thinkers had the very hard task of deciding who from among the 60 submissions should be the winner.

The choice was in fact a very difficult one, given the large number of original, creative photos. Besides receiving wonderful vacation pictures from Croatia, Bali and Oman, we got drawings and photos from our international learners, e.g. from India, Vietnam, Ukraine, Switzerland, Hungary, the United States, France and Belgium.

Winner likes lying in the hammock while taking the openHPI courses

The first prize goes to Rike Ullenbaum (36), who is an expert for work and organizational psychology from Wuppertal. Rike is currently taking the Design Thinking MOOC and only started to learn at openHPI in 2017. The hammock photo she sent us shows how flexible, mobile, and, at the same time, comfortable learning with openHPI can be. The idyllic spot, at the very back of Rike’s garden, is a place where she can immerse herself in openHPI courses in absolute quiet.

Here you can download all 10 winning photos.

Watching openHPI videos offline - New download function in the iOS app

If you are using the openHPI app on your iPhone or iPad you maybe have already noticed: in the overview of all learning items you can now download the video lectures. These videos then are saved on your smartphone and can be watched even when you are not connected to the Internet, e.g. on the plane. Completely downloaded videos are marked with a mobile phone symbol. We hope you have fun with this new feature.

Best regards
The openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We are pleased to announce to you our new – and for this year the last – openHPI course, "Big Data Analytics", an introduction to data analysis.

Big Data Analytics – Enroll now

What it’s about
Not only in business and research do we face a tremendous mass of data. The course "Big Data Analytics" (in German) by Prof. Emmanuel Müller will show how you can analyze this data and gain valuable knowledge from it. Prof. Müller heads the research group Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining at the Hasso Plattner Institute.

Based on current applications and practical examples, Prof. Müller presents the basic problems that occur in the field of big data. Diverse algorithms, which will be discussed in the course, can help to solve them. Clustering (i.e. grouping similar objects) and classification (as a prediction based on a previously trained model using historical data) are important terms learners will deal with. To be able to evaluate the usefulness of data mining technologies for concrete applications, we will explain typical methods to evaluate algorithms in the course.

Interested learners can enroll in the course here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/bigdata2017

Who should attend the course?
In general, anyone who wants to dig deeper into the topic of big data analytics is encouraged to attend. Prior knowledge is not necessary. We recommend the course in particular to company sales representatives and researchers who deal with large datasets.

Good to know
Besides the regular record of achievement, participants can earn a qualified certificate in this course. The Hasso Plattner Institute recommends to other universities the allocation of two credit points for the certificate of achievement.
The estimated time required for the course is between three and six hours a week.

Protect your Privacy in Social Media – our workshop in English explains how

Last Monday the two-week workshop “Social Media – What No One has Told you about Privacy” began. Dr. Anne Kayem, guest researcher from South Africa, explains in this workshop how fake news is spread and how you as a user can protect yourself from the spread of false information about you.
You can still enroll in the course and do the graded assignments (with the opportunity to earn a record of achievement).

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/ws-privacy2017

We look forward to seeing you in the course!

Best regards
the openHPI team

Liebe Lerngemeinschaft,

am 6. und 7. Dezember 2017 findet das openHPI-Forum in Potsdam statt, Treffpunkt für alle, die sich zum Thema MOOCs und innovative Formen der digitalen Weiterbildung informieren und austauschen möchten.

Die Einsatzfelder für Massive Open Online Kurse (MOOCs) sind äußerst vielfältig – das merken wir auch auf den vier MOOC-Plattformen des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts, auf denen wir im vergangenen Jahr neben unseren eigenen Lernangeboten zu Informatik und Innovation (https://open.hpi.de) auch Online-Kurse von diversen Partnern aus Medizin, Business und Technik durchgeführt haben (https://mooc.house).

Wir beginnen die Veranstaltung mit einem halbtägigen Bar Camp. Dabei handelt es sich um ein offenes Workshop-Format, an dessen Inhalten und Ablauf die Teilnehmer zu Beginn des Bar Camps selbst mitwirken können. Neben unseren Partnern von openSAP (https://open.sap.com) wird es interaktive Sessions des HPI-tele-TASK-Teams und des openHPI-Teams geben. Ein abendlicher Empfang ab 18 Uhr rundet den ersten Tag ab und bietet Gelegenheit zum Erfahrungsaustausch und Networking.

Am Donnerstag, den 7. Dezember, beginnt die eigentliche Konferenz. Nach einer kurzen Begrüßung erwarten Sie spannende Vorträge und unterhaltsame Paneldiskussionen zu aktuellen Fragen und Forschungsschwerpunkten. Freuen Sie sich unter anderem auf die folgenden Experten:

• Natalie Cernecka
  
• Prof. Dr. Markus Egg, Humboldt Universität Berlin
  
• Katja Fels und Sylvi Rzepka, RWI Essen
  
• Prof. Dr. Petra Gastmeier, Charité Berlin
  
• Prof. Dr. Dirk Ifenthaler, Universität Mannheim
  
• Michaela Lämmler und Clemens Link, openSAP
  
• Lena Mayer, Karen von Schmieden und Mana Taheri, HPI School of Design Thinking
  
• Dr. Stephan Melzer, msg systems
  
• Heini Utunen und Yu Zhao, World Health Organization
  
• Christian Willems, openHPI-Team
  
• Gabi Witthaus, Art of E-Learning
  

Die Anmeldung zum openHPI-Forum erfolgt über diesen Link: https://hpi.de/veranstaltungen/hpi-veranstaltungen/2017/openhpi-forum-2017.html. Die Teilnahmegebühr für die zweitägige Veranstaltung beträgt 75 Euro.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihr Kommen!

Dear Learning Community,

In two weeks, the completely reworked new edition of the 2-week workshop “Social Media - What No One has Told you about Privacy“ (in English) will start on openHPI.

In the wake of the German parliamentary elections, fake news and the influence of social media is more relevant than ever. Dr. Anne Kayem, guest researcher from South Africa, shows in this workshop how fake news is spread and how users can protect themselves against the dissemination of false information about themselves. “Around 9 percent of the profiles of all facebook users are fake – these are around 83 million accounts,” says Kayem. Participants will learn more about this problem―called catfishing―and get to know methods of exposing catfishers.

No prior knowledge is necessary to take this course. The workshop addresses everyone who uses Facebook, Twitter & Co. for business or pleasure and who likes to know how to avoid data misuse and identity theft. Successful course participants will receive a certificate.

This teaser gives you a small taste of what to expect. Enroll now: https://open.hpi.de/courses/ws-privacy2017

Best regards
The openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

Only three days left until our new openHPI courses start! We would like to give you a short summary of what to expect.
Furthermore: A new feature which can be of great value, especially for our international learners.

Introduction to Mathematics of Algorithms

We highly recommend our premiering 2-week workshop (in German language only). The teaching team introduces the basic elements of computer science which are the backbone of every computer system or application. In week 1 you will learn about propositional and predicate logic. Week 2 deals with examples for important algorithms, such as finding shortest paths or the Googles PageRank algorithm. If you don't have a clue of what we are talking about, you should take this course!
Watch the trailer and enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/mat-ws

In-Memory Data Management

On the same day, Monday September 18, 2017, Prof. Hasso Plattner gives a new edition of the successful 6-week course “In-Memory Data Management”. Are you interested in trends in the database technology and hardware environments? Are you working as a business professional and deal with in-memory computing or HANA? Don’t miss this course! You will become familiar with database technology designed for fast analysis and flexible comparison of big data.

Please enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/imdb2017

Subtitles in 10 languages

All non-native speakers can look forward to a new feature! In the In-Memory Data Management course we have activated automatic translation of the videos. Subtitles in 10 languages are available, among others in German, Polish, Dutch or Russian. As you might know, state-of-the-art machine translation is not yet perfect. We are however convinced that the possibility to follow courses in a language that you don’t speak fluently offers a big potential to broaden your mind. We are curious and rely on your feedback, and we are working hard to give you machine translated subtitles soon for all of our courses.

We are looking forward to seeing you!

All the best
The openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We are happy to announce to you two courses, starting on September 18, 2017:

“In-Memory Data Management” (in English), the iteration of the very successful course by Prof. Hasso Plattner, and “Mathematics of Algorithms” (in German), a brief introduction to the language of modern math that is behind every application in computer science.

“In-Memory Data Management”

What it’s about:
Businesses often face the dilemma of how to effectively retrieve and process data quickly in a way that best meets the growing demands of the market. In this 5th iteration of Prof. Plattner’s course, participants become familiar with a revolutionary database technology. Data is kept in column-oriented in-memory databases instead of relying on traditional row-oriented disk-based storages. The speed of information processing increases dramatically and overall performance improves. Thus, nothing more stands in the way of the analysis and comparison of big data.

Good to know:
No prior knowledge is necessary to take this course. This course addresses users who are interested in trends in the database and hardware environments as well as business professionals who come in contact with in-memory computing and HANA

Do you want to know more? Then enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/imdb2017

“Introduction to the Mathematics of Algorithms”

What it’s about:
This 2-week workshop in German introduces the basic elements of computer science and explains, for example, what quantifiers and connectives are. The mathematical principles will then be applied in selected examples, and mathematical puzzles will break up the course and challenge the participants. For this course, too, no prior knowledge is required.

Interested learners can enroll in the course here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/mat-ws

We hope that these topics are of interest to you and look forward to seeing you in the course.

Best regards
the openHPI team

P.S. Until September 17, 2017 you still have the chance to participate in our competition. Show us your favorite place for learning and win a trip to Potsdam and a visit to HPI. --> Further information on the competition

Dear Learning Community,

We are very pleased to announce that we have reached a new enrollment record on openHPI. Ulrike Gärtner is the 400,000th person to enroll in an openHPI course!

We would like to celebrate this good news at the d.confestival, which takes place at the Hasso Plattner Institute campus in Potsdam from September 14 to September 16, 2017. Mrs Gärtner gets a free ticket to this unique event that brings together design thinkers from all over the world.

Ulrike has already participated in many openHPI courses, among others the first In-Memory Data Management course in 2012. She just recently enrolled in the course “Inspirations for Design: A Course on Human-Centered Research,” which starts on August 24, 2017. “I’m looking forward to finding a new (more creative) method to solving problems and, at the same time, to increase the user-friendliness of these solutions,” she said. Three experienced design thinking researchers show in this 5-week course how new ideas are born. Participants learn how innovative products or services can be created from the beginning in such a way as to fulfill users’ desires exactly.

Have you already enrolled in the course? If not, you can do so here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/insights-2017

Best regards,
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

openHPI is celebrating its 5th anniversary in September with an exciting competition! Take part in our creative contest and - with a little bit of luck - win a trip to Potsdam.

Here's how it works:

Please send us a picture (photo, comic, drawing, …) on one of the following topics:

This is my favorite learning place. Here I love to delve deep into the openHPI courses.

or

This is where I'd love to learn. Here's where I'd love to learn.

We are looking forward to your ideas! Surprise us - it will be worth your while. Prizes will be awarded to the best submissions:

• A trip to Potsdam for 2, incl. travel by train, one overnight stay and a tour of HPI
  
• Tickets for the newly opened Barberini museum in Potsdam
  
• Many more attractive prizes

Please email your picture to stefanie.schweiger@hpi.de or send by standard mail to:

Hasso Plattner Institut for Digital Engineering gGmbH
c/o Stefanie Schweiger
Prof. Dr. Helmert Str. 2-3
14482 Potsdam
Germany

Closing date is September 17, 2017. Participants agree that all pictures which are submitted may be used for marketing reasons and may be published on the openHPI website.

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We are happy to announce our first Design Thinking online course: “Inspirations for Design: A Course on Human-Centered Research”!

Inspirations for human-centered design!

“With this English-language course we want to explore the first step of the innovation method ‘design thinking’ with you”, course instructors Mana Taheri, Karen von Schmieden and Lena Mayer explain. They work as researchers in the HPI Design Thinking research program and are also design thinking coaches at the HPI School of Design Thinking or HPI Academy. More and more companies and universities apply design thinking to develop new products and solve problems by putting user needs into focus.

This five-week course will introduce you to crucial methods in design research, which will help you to discover inspirations for innovative solutions. We take a task-based approach to build your competencies and skills: You will learn to spot workarounds, observe potential users in their context and explore the basic skills of conducting insightful interviews.

The course is suitable for everyone who is curious about design thinking and human-centered approaches for solving problems.

We start on August 24 - enroll here!

See you soon!

Best regards,
the openHPI team

P.S. On September 14-16, we host the D.Confestival: the pioneering event in design thinking! Meet our outstanding speakers and experience a highly interactive program!

Dear Learning Community,

After its great success last year, we have again decided to include a workshop Embedded Smart Home (in German) in this year's program 2017.

Embedded Smart Home

The 2-weeks course starts on July 3, 2017 and addresses all who are interested in new technologies and who have fun programming.

You can enroll in the course here .

What's it about?
Martin Malchow and Matthias Bauer, who some of you might already know from the preceding course, are eager to try out other new projects for the smart home. For instance, participants will learn how sensors can be used to control external actuators (e.g., a lamp or blinds).
"At the request of many participants from the last course, this time we want to also show how a camera can be externally controlled and monitored," said the course supervisors.

Good to know
Participants can program and manage their embedded smart home with a Raspberry Pi, an affordable minicomputer. We will use the Linux distribution system Raspbian and work with the programming language Python in the programming exercises. No special hardware components are needed to participate. All tasks can easily be performed on a device that is provided by the learning platform.

Would you like to brush up your programming skills before the course begins? We recommend the course "Learning how to program in a playful way" (in German), available in the archive mode. Participants who like to play around with their own Raspberry Pi at home, will get more information to prepare for the course before it officially starts.

See you soon in the course!

Rate Your Favorite Courses

Some of you might have noticed that we have recently introduced a new feature on openHPI. On the course details page you now have the possibility to evaluate openHPI courses - anonymously or under your own name. Share your course experience with others and award up to 5 stars for courses you have taken so far. In this way, you help other learners to find out if a course is for them. Once you have clicked on the "submit" button, you will be directed to mammooc.org, a platform where you will find MOOCs on many different topics. Here, you can easily compare courses or filter those offered in different languages or on a special topic.

Best regards,
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

We are delighted to announce our brand-new courses: "How does a search engine work?" and "Mainframes", which will start shortly (both courses are in German).

How does a search engine work? What it's about?

"In this 2-week workshop, we want to have a look at simple concepts of information retrieval in the web context," course teacher Ralf Krestel says. Krestel is head of the Web Science research group at the Hasso Plattner Institute. Participants will learn, for example, how a search engine is built, which process is started when searching for something, and according to what criteria the results are listed.

Anyone who wants to know more about the constantly used "search engine" tool is welcome to participate. There are no pre-requisites for this course.

Have we sparked your interest? If so, please enroll here.

Mainframes - What it's about?

70 percent of the Global 500 are using mainframes to ensure that transactions and other processes are conducted correctly and without data loss. In this 6-week course, Prof. Dr. Andreas Polze from HPI, Wolfram Greis from the Academic Mainframe Consortium, Prof. Dr. Philipp Brune from the University of Neu-Ulm, and speakers from IBM will give an overview of mainframe architecture and its application development. Databases, transaction systems, security and mainframes, and storage management are other important chapters in this course. Participants should already have a basic knowledge of computer science and algorithms.

Here you can watch the trailer and enroll in the course.

We look forward to your participation!

openHPI at Sapphire Now 2017 in Orlando

Next week, we will be presenting openHPI as well as our mooc.house platform at Sapphire Now, the world's annual business technology event taking place in Orlando, Florida. With mooc.house you can become a MOOC provider yourself and offer courses either to a broad public or to a specific target group. Meet us at our booth 200 and test your knowledge in the openHPI/openSAP quiz battle! For more information, click here.

Best regards,
the openHPI team

Dear Learning Community,

Study guidelines, good practice and recommendations on how to apply MOOCs, learn about opportunities for the use of MOOCs and discuss hot topics such as quality, business models or certification. For more visit www.mooc-book.eu.

Digital technologies and new demands of learners and the labour market are the main drivers behind the process of changing the Global Education. However, several EU regions, higher education institutions and businesses appear to be not aware of the situation and might lose the connection to this rapid growth in the long term. Especially for the world of business, a huge potential lies idle.

The MOOC BOOK is realised under the umbrella of the EU-funded project “BizMOOC – Knowledge Alliance to enable a European-wide exploitation of the potential of MOOCs for the world of business”. “With BizMOOC, we want to encourage the modernisation of European education, generate a cross-border and cross-sector knowledge exchange on MOOCs in Europe and promote the acquisition of labour market key competences”, said Christian Friedl, coordinator of BizMOOC project.

For Higher Education Institutions, there are several benefits coming from the MOOC BOOK. First of all, MOOC BOOK offers answers to various questions related to how MOOCs address HEIs. The questions and answers are grouped into three main categories: MOOC basics, MOOC adoption and advanced MOOC concept thus targeting those new to MOOCs, those who have a little experience with MOOCs and those well-experienced with it. The next part of the MOOC BOOK is called needs and gaps to MOOCs which offers identification of needs and gaps for the application of MOOCs by HEIs. It is concluded by the State of the Art on existing MOOC knowledge with topics such as existing MOOC quality models or issues for MOOC recognition, certification and accreditation.

World of the business profits from the MOOC BOOK equally. Guidelines provide the extensive knowledge on applying MOOCs from external providers and applying self-produced MOOCs, answering questions such as what the potential costs are when employing the existing MOOCs by other providers, or what the options are if the business wants to provide MOOCs on their own. Similarly the next part of the MOOC BOOK offers the identification of opportunities of MOOCs for the business community. The final part may then answer any questions related to 14 relevant MOOC topics, for instance MOOC IPR issues, MOOCs and Human Resource Development or existing MOOC business models.

The MOOC BOOK also does include labour force/society as such. It addresses the society in general and provides information on MOOCs in general, learning on a MOOC and taking MOOCs further. What is the right type of MOOC and teaching approach for me, are the employers aware of MOOCs, how can MOOCs improve my skills – those are just some of the questions the MOOC BOOK answers. In the section for the society it also provides very interesting results from the society survey carried out with a range of citizens across Europe including students, non-formal/lifelong learners, the unemployed and employees in a range of industries.

Dear Learning Community,

Days are getting longer, and the time is coming when we can sit outside in the sun - the Easter holidays will be here before you know it!

Maybe, you have planned a short trip somewhere, or you want to spend an enjoyable time at home. Perhaps you even have the time and leisure to do some coding exercises. The openHPI Java team has done everything to make sure that you won't get bored. If you have not yet enrolled in the course "Object-Oriented Programming in Java", take a look at the content of the first 3 weeks, which is now available. You can still join the course community.

Java workshop - Introduction to a Java IDE

We are happy to announce the next Java course to all enthusiastic participants of the introductory course "Object-Oriented Programming with Java," running at the moment, and who want to learn more. In the 2-week workshop "Introduction to a Java IDE" Ralf Teusner and Tom Staubitz are going to dive deeper into the topic and explain how to use a Java IDE (Integrated Development Environment). For working with Java, just as in any other programming language, you need certain tools, such as a compiler, an interpreter and an editor. These tools are called the Integrated Development Environment.

Having learned the basic concepts of Java in the currently running course, we would now like to teach you in the following workshop how to implement your own programs.

So: Please mark the first of May in your calendar, the date when the Java IDE workshop starts. Everyone is welcome who has at least basic programming knowledge in Java. You can enroll here.

nanou - The new iOS microlearning app

As you know, we are steadily looking for new features that support learning. At the moment we are testing a prototype for microlearning. Some of you already have installed the app which is available for iOS (iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone) and only in the German language so far. The mobile application offers short video lectures based on your personal interests. Those of you who have already visited many openHPI courses might recognize the one or the other video. The video snippets of 3-4 minutes build on one another contentwise. Every time you watch a video, other videos are made available. You can rate the videos after having watched them and thus improve the recommendations. We have compiled more than 50 videos from openHPI and other sources for you.

Here you can download the app.

We are looking forward to your feedback! You will be invited to take part in a survey directly in the app.

Besides programming, you can learn a lot of other things on openHPI, for example how search engines or mainframes work, or how you can make your home smart. Here you can find the complete course calendar.

Best regards and happy Easter,
the openHPI Team

Liebe Lerngemeinschaft,

Wir suchen stetig nach neuen Features und Funktionen, die euch beim Lernen unterstützen. Aus diesem Grund möchten wir gerne einen neuen Prototypen zum Thema Micro-Learning testen.

Die mobile Applikation schlägt euch, basierend auch euren Interessen, kurze Lernvideos aus dem IT-Bereich vor. Diese bauen thematisch aufeinander auf. So werden mit jeder Wiedergabe neue Videos freigeschaltet. Die Videos könnt Ihr nach der Wiedergabe bewerten und so die Vorschläge verbessern. Wir haben insgesamt über 50 Videos aus openHPI und anderen Quellen zusammengestellt.

Ladet nanou hier herunter und benutzt die App auf iPhone, iPad oder iPod touch.

Wir freuen uns über eure Teilnahme und euer Feedback! Ihr werdet hierfür direkt in der App zu einer Umfrage eingeladen.

Dear Learning Community,

The course "Object-oriented programming with Java" (in German language) has started. We are looking forward to 4 exciting and intense weeks with you.

Maybe you don't know, yet, what classes, objects, variables and loops are, but no worries, after having taken the course you will have a good overview of these topics. The main focus is on practical programming exercises, which can be edited directly in the browser thanks to the web-based programming platform CodeOcean.

If you are not enrolled to the course, yet, you can do so here.

openHPI at CeBIT

The world's biggest computer fair, the CeBIT in Hannover, came to an end yesterday. Of course, openHPI was there, too. Enriched by a lot of new impressions and feedback, we are back now (a big thank you at this point to all the openHPI learners who came to see us there!). Federal Minister of Education Johanna Wanka, the Saxon Minister of the Interior Markus Ulbig and the ministers Meisch (education) and Schmit (labour) from Luxembourg came to visit HPI and got informed about openHPI and the other HPI MOOC platforms. Furthermore, a lot of school classes took the opportunity to learn more about the HPI and the course offer of openHPI. They especially liked the openHPI quiz in which the players had to answer 10 questions concerning the Internet and social media in a short time - the winner received an openHPI cup.

MOOC BOOK - A guideline on how to apply MOOCs

openHPI recently joined the EU project bizMOOC. Together with 10 partners from the whole of Europe we have summarized in a MOOC BOOK guidelines, best practices and recommendations on how to apply MOOCs. Especially for the world of business and for Higher Education Institutions (HEI) MOOCs have a huge potential, for example for training, marketing or recruiting purposes. Guidelines provide the extensive knowledge on applying MOOCs from external providers and applying self-produced MOOCs, answering questions such as what the potential costs are when employing the existing MOOCs by other providers, or what the options are if the business wants to provide MOOCs on their own.

Did we spark your interest? Here you can access the MOOC BOOK.

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

Recently, openHPI joined the European BizMOOC project.

We are glad about this opportunity to exchange our MOOC experience with colleagues and researchers all over Europe. We are aiming at merging our knowledge and making it available to all interested stakeholders.

BizMOOC - What is it about?

The project tackles the European challenge of enabling businesses, labour force and universities to increase their activities and exploitation (economies of scale) of the MOOC potential. This will be achieved by creating common standards on MOOCs by integrating the experiences from Higher Education and the business world. The most important result will be the open access MOOC Book, which provides recommendations, guidelines, methods and strategies. Moreover, we'll produce 3 pilot MOOCs focussing on topics such as entrepreneurship and innovation, of which one will run at mooc.house. We'll inform you in good time before the start.

The MOOC Book - Core of the Project

The MOOC Book is the free online resource to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for businesses, workforce and universities. It contains guidelines, good practice and recommendations how to apply MOOCs, opportunities for the use of MOOCs and hot topics such as quality, business models or certification.

What is the right type of MOOC for me? Where can I find MOOCs for certain topics? Do universities recognize learning done through MOOCs? Are MOOCs only an extra expense or also a possible new income source for universities? What are possible reasons for companies to provide MOOCs themselves? What are the technical requirements? This is only a selection of questions which are raised and publicly discussed in the MOOC Book.

Did we spark your interest? Here you find the full text. We are looking forward to your comments!

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We are looking forward to welcome you at this year's CeBIT which takes place from March 20 to March 24 in Hannover.

At CeBIT 2017 in hall 6 at booth E18 the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) is presenting current research projects from the areas of IT security, digital education, eHealth and Design Thinking in line with this year’s motto: "Growing Together". Here you find more information about the different projects.

We would gladly present you the new features of openHPI such as team peer assessment and the qualified certificate for which students can newly achieve credit points. You would like to provide your own MOOCs? Then we should definitely talk about our mooc.house platform where you can run your own courses with your own branding.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

Best regards
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We regularly ask our users about their motivation to participate in the openHPI courses.
This time we spoke to Dominik Hausner. He is a computer science teacher, who often uses the openHPI programming courses directly in class:

"Around 120 students from our school have participated in the course "Learning how to Program in a Playful Way". They are very interested and enthusiastic about it and even spend their spare time to work on the tasks. Especially, the programming platform CodeOcean offers great didactic possibilities for beginners, which can rarely be found with other education software or student IDEs for computer science."

Do you also want to appear in this section and say a few words on your experience with openHPI? We are looking forward to receiving your statement and photo at openhpi-info@hpi.de.

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We are happy to invite you to our new 4-week openHPI course "Object-Oriented Programming in Java" (in German language) which starts on March 27. Here you find the trailer and the button to enroll to the course.

What is it about?

Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It is particularly suitable to learn object-oriented programming (OOP).
OOP is a programming paradigm organized around objects, which are often modeled as an abstraction of real life.
Basically, this concept is closer to the human way of thinking than to the requirements of the machine.

Detective Duke and Robot Robin are the protagonists of the course. They will be accompanying the participants through the course and bridge the technical concepts to the real world. Robot Robin, for example, was modeled with specific qualities and capacities to solve the present case.

Step by step, the learners will experience the concepts of classes, objects and variables. How can problems be represented with attributes and methods?
Further topics of the course are constructors and loops, visibilities and inheritance.
Finally, we will have a look at modeling techniques and class diagrams.

The course focuses on practical exercises, which can be implemented comfortably in the web browser on CodeOcean, our integrated programming platform.

Who should attend the course?

The course addresses everyone who is interested in object-oriented programming.
You only need a computer with Internet access to take part. Previous experience may be helpful, but is no requirement.

The course is offered by an HPI team of 7 researchers and students.
We estimate the workload around 3-6 hours per week, depending on the previous knowledge.
Got a taste for Java? Then you already should schedule the following 2-week workshop "Introduction to a Java-IDE" in your calendar to deepen your acquired skills. We are looking forward to seeing you in the course! This workshop is also offered in German only!

Another course recommendation for March: Machine Learning

Have you already seen the course on Machine Learning (in German language) which will start on mooc.house, our partner platform on March 20? During 3 weeks business experts, developers, researchers and users will present methods, tools and application fields of machine learning. Here you can enroll to the course which is offered by acatech (National Academy of Science and Engineering) in cooperation with DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence).

Best regards,
The openHPI Team

Dear Leaning Community,

We'd like to regularly quote our learners at this point. Without you, openHPI wouldn't be the successfull learning platform it is.

Oriol Borras Gene is PhD at the Technical University of Madrid and appreciates the features offered by the platform:

"For those who work in the world of IT, openHPI offers a variety of interesting courses. Elements such as video indexation or collab spaces offer additional benefits to the course, making it easier to follow and to learn about the topic."

Do you also want to appear in this section and say a few words on your experience with openHPI? We are looking forward to receiving your statement and photo at openhpi-info@hpi.de.

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

The course Web Technologies (in German language) started on Monday with more than 6,000 participants. We highly recommend this introduction to the World Wide Web to all of you who have not yet registered.

In week 1, Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel explains the http protocol, caches, and cookies. Learn and discuss with us in the forum and share your experience with the other course participants.

The deadline for week 1's homework has been extended to the 20th of February. So it is still not to late to join the course.

A Qualified Certificate is available for this course. It additionally features a photo of the participant and grants ECTS credits. The Qualified Certificate can still be booked until Friday, February 17.

Please enroll here for the course Web Technologies.

Mastering Digital Transformation - Start: February 13

We would like to draw your attention to another exciting course which starts next Monday on our partner platform mooc.house. Mastering Digital Transformation is a 6 week course in German, run by msg systems. Experts in science and economy will introduce new business models, technologies and recent research on digital transformation. Furthermore, they will provide hands-on examples to show the transformation process in different industry sectors and its impact on our professional life. In week 1, Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel will give a brief introduction into the topic and take up subjects such as internet security and IT innovations for the digital transformation.

Please enroll here for the course Mastering Digital Transformation.

Machine Learning - Start: March 20

Last year the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) held a course on Industry 4.0 on mooc.house. Shortly, a new acatech course will start - this time they focus on the subject of machine learning.

Assistance systems on your smartphone or autopilots in your car: The technology lying behind is artificial intelligence and machine learning. In this 3 week course in German offered by acatech and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence you will learn to teach machines to learn.

Please enroll here for the course Machine Learning.

We hope you'll find an interesting course in this selection and we are looking forward to see you there.

With kind regards
the openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

In less than 2 weeks, on the 6th of February, the new 6 week course on Web Technologies starts. We would like to cordially invite you to join!

What is it about?

The World Wide Web has revolutionized our communication, but often the underlying technologies are a great mystery to the user. It brings fundamental changes to our society, and, through Industry 4.0, new insights for industry (e.g., regarding customer behavior). At the same time, new avenues of manipulation have opened for criminals. In the online course, Web Technologies, instructed by Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel, you will learn how these killer applications of the Internet work and their main impact on society. The course addresses everyone who wants to know more about the background of the web and to learn how it works.

Here you can watch the trailer and enroll to the course.

Beta version of iOS App is available - Become a tester

This form allows you to register for the openHPI beta test on iPhone and iPad: https://tools.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey&sid=955163&lang=en

A few days after registering, you will receive an email from Apple with a link to our invitation code. You will first need to install the TestFlight app on your iPhone or iPad from the Apple App Store. After entering the invitation code in the app you can download the openHPI app and start testing. We are looking forward to your feedback.

New Gamification Features

Our developers have activated some new features at the beginning of this year. Feel free to try them out in the Web Technologies course for the first time. Some of you might already know them from the gamification elements in mooc.house.

Gamification makes it possible to reward high activity in the forum or continuous work in the course - things that were not taken into consideration with the credit points. Those who give good answers, for example, and help their peers receive the Knowledgeable Badge and a certain amount of XP (Experience Points). These points are also reflected in the user states, as well, which is visible to the other users in the forum (highest level: "purple belt" with 50,000 XP).

Here we explain how badges and points are distributed.

MOOCs for study - get credit points for openHPI courses

Since the end of 2016 we have been offering a new type of performance record at openHPI: The Qualified Certificate with photo. This certificate allows us to verify that the participant has actually taken the exam independently. It can be obtained for all 6-week courses (i.e., the Web Technologies course, as well).

On the courses page you find a note in orange reading "Qualified Certificate / ECTS". It marks all courses that offer a qualified certificate. HPI recommends the awarding of 2 credit points for such a certificate.

We are looking forward to seeing you in the course!

See you soon,
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We hope that you had a good start in the New Year! We are working intensely on the new course Web Technologies (in German) which will start on February 6, 2017. We would like to sincerely invite you all!

What is the Course about?

The World Wide Web is the most powerful application of the Internet. Online banking, Internet shopping and communication within seconds would not be possible in the convenient way we know today. In this course we would like to give you an overview of this technology, e.g. have a look at the identification scheme in the web (URI). We will explain how documents are requested and transmitted in the web (HTTP). Do you actually know what cookies are good for? What about how linking works? How do documents have to be structured to be read by machines (XML)? We'd like to answer all these questions in the course. Nowadays, websites are often very complex systems – entire application programs are offered in the browser. You'll learn the basics of web programming, databases and frameworks and get to know JavaScript which is used for example to implement effects on websites or Ruby on Rails which is used to carry out complex web projects. At the end of the course Prof. Meinel will talk about the effects of the Web on society and give advice about where users of this technology should be careful. Twitter bots, echo chambers or identity theft and other security aspects are only some of the topics which will play a role in week 6.

Who is the Course for?

The course is intended for all interested Internet user who would like to get a better understanding of the underlying technologies of the web. The only thing you need is curiosity, a bit of time, and Internet access - There are no pre-requisites.

Here you can enroll for the course on Web Technologies.

Recommend openHPI and win 1 out of 10 vouchers for the qualified certificate

Do you like our platform and the course offer? Invite your friends to become part of the openHPI learning community. Spread this email or invite your friends via Facebook to join our next course: https://www.facebook.com/events/203394706792678/.
Among all who bring 3 or more new learners on openHPI we'll draw 10 vouchers for the qualified certificate to a value of 60 euro. Please write an email to stefanie.schweiger@hpi.de, keyword "January Campaign", and mention name and email address of the person who has newly enrolled at openHPI.

We are looking forward to seeing you in the course!

Best regards,
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

As another year draws to a close, we'd like to seize this opportunity to sum up the highlights of 2016.

This was 2016

From smart home to digital health
In 2016, we were very pleased to exceed our course enrollment threshold of 300,000, with a 46% growth of 107,886 enrollments in total since January! Next to front runners such as Internet Security or How does the Internet work?, we also widened our scope to include several new topics.

Dr. Manuel Effenberg from the HPI School of Entrepreneurship (E-School) offered a 2-week workshop on how to create a successful IT startup. In addition, Dr. Matthieu-P. Schapranow, who is the "E-Health" Program Manager at HPI has just finished his lectures on the Code of Life - When Computer Science meets Genetics. Our statistics tell us that the course on Embedded Smart Home was highly popular. Perhaps because participants could dive into the world of smart home using their own raspberry pi and temperature as well as humidity sensors. Another newcomer, Lisa Ihde, who is an undergraduate student at HPI addressed our young audience with a course on designing your own homepage.

MOOCs for study
A lot has changed on the platform from a technical point of view, too. Probably the most significant new feature is the qualified certificate which went live in October 2016. This certificate which includes the participant's photo next to the typical course and grading information makes it possible for students to obtain credit points for MOOCs at their home university.

Android and iOS App
The Android app has been on the market for a while now already. iPhone owners can be joyful because openHPI announced news on the beta version of the iOS app last Sunday. For those of you who own an iPhone and want to test the app, you are welcome to provide us with your email address on the form available in the Advent MOOC (week 4).

Start of the Web Technologies course (in German) on February 6

Next year we will take off with a course many of you might already know. The Web Technologies course which was last offered in 2015 has been updated and extended with a variety of topics. We plan to spend one whole week discussing the "Web in Society", as this technology permeates our society in a profound way. We will have a closer look at phenomena such as formation of opinion and manipulation in social media, security in the Social Web and Internet of Things.

Have we succeeded in enkindling you interest? If so, please enroll here.

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year! And if you are bored during the holidays take a look at openHPI. On December 24, on the Advent MOOC, we are going to lift the secret of the participants' favorite feature. How exciting!

Best regards,
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

What a nice advent surprise! The new openHPI course program is online now. In case you haven’t already seen it, here’s a short summary of what we are going to cover in 2017:

• We'll start with a relaunch of the 6-week Web Technologies course (in German) which was last successfully held in 2015. The participants will learn how the World Wide Web works. Through this killer Internet application worldwide communication is possible within seconds.

• April and May are "Java months". First, the openHPI team is giving a 4-week introduction to object-orientated programming combined with an exciting detective story. In the following 2-week workshop the participants can put to use what they have learned. Both courses are held in German.

• Those who loved the search engines subject in the course Web Technologies, should have a look at the 2-week workshop How do search engines work. Dr. Ralf Krestel explains the basics of information retrieval (in German).

• The next newcomer is a 6-week course on mainframes (in German). Nearly all big players work with these computers. Prof. Andreas Polze and other experts on the subject will present the architecture and characteristics of these mainframes.

• The next course is for all hobbyists among you. In the 2-week workshop Embedded Smart Home we explain how you can control the illumination at your home using a raspberry pi and some sensors and actuators. This course is in German.

• Another new topic that adds to the diversity is an Introduction to Algorithmics (in German). The 2-week course is a good preparation for the study of computer science. Computer science and mathematics are closely linked. For example, the search algorithms of Google are based on mathematical laws.

• Next year we’ll again have what many of you have asked for this year: In-Memory Data Management, our long running course which has been in high demand since openHPI started (English, 6 weeks).

• openHPI without a course on security??? In the relaunch of Social Media - What No One has Told you about Privacy, learners experience which risks lurk in social media and how they can protect themselves, for example by choosing the right settings (English, 2 weeks).

• As usual, the last course of the year comes from the Semantic Web research group. How can we find useful information in the huge web? How can the meaning of information be accessed in an automated way and interpreted correctly? Prof. Sack will answer these questions in his 6-week course on Semantic Web Technologies (in English).

10 exciting topics - but who knows ... we have received your course wishes in the Advent MOOC, and the vote is yet to be decided.

Enroll now and don’t miss out on your favorite course!

You can find our complete course program here.

Best winter wishes,
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

In the coming weeks, we just want to make you smile with our “mini MOOC.” There are a total of 4 surprises that we will reveal to you on the coming Sundays before Christmas.

Tomorrow, Prof. Christoph Meinel will announce in a short video what will be the first surprise. Don't miss this event and enroll for it now.

Here you can enroll for the Advent MOOC.

Have a great weekend!

Best regards,
The openHPI Team

Dear Learning Community,

We are working continuously to improve the learner experience on our platform. Today, we would like to know what you think about game-based learning.

Whereas in gamification, participants are rewarded points and badges (e.g. for making significant contributions to the forum), in game-based learning, a game is implemented in the course context which creates playful access to the topic.

Please take 5 minutes to answer a couple of questions on the subject.

Link to the survey: https://tools.openhpi.de/survey/index.php?r=survey%2Findex&sid=975453

Thank you!

Best regards
the openHPI Team

This year's openHPI forum was a big success. We started with a world cafe on the previous day which was used to discuss questions relating to the future of digital education within a small group.

The exciting talks and panel discussions by known speakers (e.g., from Carlos III University Madrid, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, World Health Organization), attracted around 75 visitors on the HPI campus.

Everyone who couldn't attend personally, can watch the recording of the event on tele-TASK: https://www.tele-task.de/

Try out our new openHPI Android app. It can be installed on the SD card of supported devices.
Big advantage: More space for offline videos. Moreover, it supports Android 7 functions such as MultiWindow and round icons under 7.1. See yourself how we have optimized the previous version.

Download it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.xikolo.openhpi

If you want to know more or help us, you can do so here: https://github.com/openHPI/xikolo-android/releases/tag/v1.6

New Functions

Main new functions of the version 1.6 at a glance:

• App can be installed on external storage
  
• Android 7: Support for Multi-Window usage
  
• Android 7.1: Support for round app icons
  
• Major internal changes
  
• Bug fixes and performance improvements
  

Dear Learning Community,

The new openHPI workshop "Code of Life - When Computer Science Meets Genetics" is about the interaction of IT and medicine and the opportunities inherent to the analysis of digital genetic data. The new 2-week course starts on November 14 on openHPI.

What is the course about?

With the help of state-of-the-art computer technologies huge datasets can be analysed today in seconds. Especially in medicine, these intelligent algorithms are extremely helpful in recognizing disease patterns and the likelihood of an illness at an early stage.

The English workshop will be held by Dr. Matthieu Schapranow, Program Manager e-health. It provides an introduction to the subject. In the first week participants can refresh their knowledge of genetics (e.g., on DNA, RNA and genetic change).

In the second course week the focus will be on processing and interpreting data and is directed at, among other, medical professionals. The participants will have the possibility to try out for themselves a few applications for medical data analysis and to evaluate their relevance.

Who is the course for?

The course is intended for everyone who would like to get to know more about the foundations of human life. Furthermore, the teaching team recommends it to students and researchers of natural sciences (biology, genetics, medical experts, computer scientists). The forum discussions with participants from different disciplines and the teaching team can be particularly rewarding.

You can easily enroll here: https://open.hpi.de/courses/ehealth2016

We hope that you are interested in diving into this exciting topic with us. Pre-course reading materials as well as additional information about our projects focusing on digital health are available at https://we.analyzegenomes.com/.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Best regards,
the openHPI Team

Dear openHPI friends,

"Digital Education - Quo Vadis"- This is the topic of this year's openHPI forum.

Professionals from different companies and institutions, e.g. from the World Health Organization (WHO), Telekom, SAP and acatech, will talk about their experience with the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other digital tools for teaching employees, training customers and reaching society. Furthermore, the openHPI team will demonstrate new features of the MOOC platform openHPI and the enterprise version mooc.house. The forum will be held in German. For more information and registration, please click here: https://hpi.de/veranstaltungen/hpi-veranstaltungen/2016/openhpi-forum-2016.html

Best regards
The openHPI team

Dear learning community,

In the course "Linked Data Engineering" which starts on October 17, you will be able to book a qualified certificate - a new offer at openHPI. Booking for the new proof of performance is now open.

If you are enrolled for the course, you will see the button "Book a Qualified Certificate" on the course detail page. More information and advantages of this new feature are summarized under this link: https://open.hpi.de/pages/document_types?locale=en#qualified-certificate.

We are looking forward to your feedback!

Best,
The openHPI team