MOOC "Regions, EU institutions and policy-making"
Dear Committee of the Regions,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:
The selection criteria and selection process of the instructors teaching the upcoming Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) "Regions, EU institutions and policy-making".
Yours faithfully,
Peter
Good morning,
Further to your request, we inform you that the CoR MOOC "Regions, EU institutions and policy-making" is produced by the European Committee of the Regions by using internal resources and existing framework contracts in vigor. The politicians and experts who have contributed to the course are EU staff, Members of an EU institution, or experts who volunteered to participate in this innovative project without fees. There are no contracted instructors in this course.
Thank you for your enquiry.
Kind regards,
Archives Department - Official correspondence - Transparency
Committee of the Regions of the European Union
Bâtiment Jacques Delors
101 rue Belliard,
B-1040 Brussels
Fax +32 (0)2 282 23 25
http://www.cor.europa.eu
Dear Sir, Madam,
Many thanks for your quick reply. While your answer contains some useful information, it has not completely answered my question. I'll elaborate on what I would like to know:
How were the politicians and experts who have contributed to the course, selected?
Did they come forward themselves or were they asked?
Was there an interview process?
Did the CoR set certain criteria that required the final team of contributors to have a gender balance, and/or a certain distribution of nationalities and regional origins, and/or a fair representation of political groups?
Yours sincerely,
Peter
Dear Sir,
Further to your request, the process of selecting the experts, who contributed (or will contribute) to the course was organised as follows.
In a first step in March 2015, the thematic interests of the potential participants of the course were evaluated through an online survey. Based on this, contents and length of the course were developed and discussed inside the CoR and with external experts, e.g. colleagues of the European School of Administration, the European Institute of Public Administration and others.
Depending on the content, the following 20+ contributors were approached in May and June 2015 and invited to participate in interviews/debates, most of which were filmed in July:
• eight Members of the CoR including the President, the Vice-President as well as the Chairs of the six CoR Commissions, all of whom represent all the Political Groups of the CoR (7 men, one woman from eight different member states);
• two Members of the European Parliament (2 one EPP one from the S&D, both women from two different member states, one withdrew);
• two Members of the European Commission (2, one EPP, one S&D; both withdrew);
• five officials from the European Commission (five from three countries, four men, one woman);
• five academics (from four different member states, four men, one woman).
Unfortunately, we had some last-minutes declines. The names of all external contributors can be found be found at: http://cor.europa.eu/en/welcome/Document...
During the eight live debates of the course between October and December, we will attempt to involve some 20+ EU officials at the level of heads of units or administrator to give deeper insights into ongoing works of the EU institutions. They will be approached on a case by case basis in August/September.
In approaching all contributors, we based/will based our choice of their function and expertise and attempted to respect the widest possible institutional, geographical, and gender balance. Moreover, as far as the politicians were concerned, we went for the full coverage of the political groups as represented in the CoR. None of the contributors received a fee, only travel expenses were covered for most of the academic experts. Members of the CoR were interviewed when being in Brussels in order to avoid additional costs.
Thank you for your enquiry.
Kind regards,
Archives Department - Official correspondence - Transparency Committee of the Regions of the European Union Bâtiment Jacques Delors
101 rue Belliard,
B-1040 Brussels
Fax +32 (0)2 282 23 25
http://www.cor.europa.eu