Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday, 14th June with Anant Argawal, President of edX and Professor at MIT,  Maren Deepwell, chief executive of ALT, highlighted the need for research into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the potential of technology for innovation in education.

As the Association's own first foray into open online courses, ocTEL, comes to a close this week, data from the course is going to made openly available for researchers who are interested in contributing to the emerging insights into MOOCs. The open course in Technology Enhanced Learning, ocTEL, was designed and is run by members of the Association and aims potential to raise the profile and capability of learning technology across sectors.

Over the past 10 weeks close to 1300 participants have engaged with the course and live weekly webinar sessions have featured contributions from a range experts including Diana Laurillard and Nancy White.The final live webinar in the series will take place on Thursday, 20 June and bring together many of the authors and tutors who have developed and supported ocTEL.

Research into MOOCs will also feature throughout this year's conference programme at ALT's annual conference in September, #altc2013, with keynotes from Stephen Downes, Wendy Hall and Rachel Wenstone and registration now open. 

To listen to a recording of the Today programme, please follow this link (and skip to 1hr 45min).