Published: 2020-09-02

Four years after its successful start, LUSEM’s first open online course on Digital Business Models is now being relaunched with new content. In parallel, the production of a new open online course on African development – from the past to the present is being launched.

Our global open online course on Digital Business Models has attracted a large number of participants from across the world. Since its start in late 2016, the course can boast more than 25 000 participants from over 70 % of the world’s countries. The strongest demand has come from India – a growing tech-savvy country – followed closely with participants from the US, Germany, UK and Mexico.

The updated course will offer new examples, re-recorded videos as well as an additional module. For a couple of hours every week, the participants follow the instructor Andreas Constantinou for five weeks, covering overarching questions like:

• What is a digital business model?
• How is it that the global platform companies have been able to achieve such a dominant global influence? Why is it difficult to challenge this dominant position?
• What is the landscape software developers navigate?

“The digital economy is moving”

Markus Lahtinen is lecturer in informatics at Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM.) He coordinated the MOOC work back in 2016 and has been involved in the relaunch of the course.

“The content from 2016 has stood the test of time. However, my colleagues and I still saw a need to update the course. The digital economy has moved on since 2016, meaning some of the details needed to be updated. The re-recorded material also comes across as more professional. My colleague Benjamin Weaver deserves much credit for the work he has put down in the editing the videos. Post-production is often overlooked in terms of workload, but it is critical for an integrated quality experience,” says Markus Lahtinen.

Andreas Constantinou, the course instructor, is an adjunct professor of informatics at LUSEM. In parallel to his commitments to LUSEM, he runs a firm – SlashData – systematically surveying and analysing the characteristics of software developers in the digital economy. The customers are mostly innovation and tech companies based on the West Coast in the US. The course offers a current and overarching description on the importance software developers holds as engines of the global digital economy.

Andreas Constantinou comments on what has been the positive surprises of the open online course on Digital Business Models the past years:

“The online course has reached a truly diverse audience and many students have reached out with words of gratitude – from a car dealership manager in Egypt to a financial police officer in Italy and a digital marketing executive in Jamaica. In only 15 months the number of course completers doubled to reach over 1 000, in half the time it took for the course to reach the first 500 completers. With more people taking online courses than ever, we feel it's the perfect time to release the updated, second edition of the course,” says Andreas Constantinou.

Come September, LUSEM will launch the production of a brand new global open online course. Course instructor Ellen Hillbom, senior lecturer in economic history at LUSEM, will offer a course on African development – from the past to the present.

Visit the updated Digital Business Models course on Coursera Sign up if you are interested!