We are proud to announce the Fourth LWMOOC Conference to be held at The University of Texas at Austin, beginning the evening of Sunday, October 8th and concluding the afternoon of Tuesday, October 10th, 2017. The theme of this year’s conference is Developing and Advancing Careers with MOOCs.

Though initial visions of MOOCs as free learning resources for the masses have not yet become reality, millions of learners around the world are using MOOCs to support professional development and career advancement. This activity represents an important shift from the traditional top-down model of university degrees to more of a learner-generated, micro-credentialing “bottom-up” model. How will the research community respond to help ensure that technology-mediated instruction at scale continues to be more learner-focused and community enhanced? What work can we initiate or surface that allows for underserved learners to benefit from more accessible opportunities for career advancement? How can we create and sustain socially supportive online contexts that are conducive for career development, especially for the underserved? And what resources might make this more possible?

We are now welcoming submissions at the LWMOOC EasyChair page [https://easychair.org/cfp/lwmooc17] where you can see the full CFP. All submissions should be made using the extended abstract format [download] and should be a maximum of 500 words. The submission deadline is Thursday, June 15, 2017.