The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) Centre Mathesis was founded in 2015 by Stefanos Trachanas, as a special department of Crete University Press (CUP). Mathesis’ aim is to offer top-international-standards-quality free online courses to students, professionals, academics/scientists and to the general public.
We believe that there is a big worldwide revolution going on regarding online education and Greece shouldn’t be left out of it. Given our non-profit nature with the responsibility of serving the common good and values, we felt the compelling need to create Mathesis, through CUP and FORTH. Mathesis is a national hub of online courses that will monitor international developments, trying to keep up accordingly.
The way we see it, our online courses should follow the philosophy of CUP books; thus using top quality professionalism and know-how to offer knowledge to students, professionals, scientists/academics and the general public. In this way, Mathesis naturally proceeded as a CUP extension in the MOOC field.
The name Mathesis originates from Descartes’ mathesis universalis. We attempted to build – starting from the Ancient Greek meaning of the words mathema (lesson), mathesis (learning) and mathema-tical – a universal science based on the deductive reasoning of Mathematics. In our own, humbler version of it, the name simply indicates our intention to offer courses that will cover the whole range of Basic Sciences – from Mathematics and Physics to History and Philosophy.
Finally, concerning our logo – Mathesis’ letter M with an open circle around it like the typical symbol @ of our internet era – we wanted it to display, at the same time, the oldest and the newest features in learning; online learning.
If we were to summarise our mission in a single word, it would be this: Quality. This is our fundamental value here at Mathesis.
Contrary to the commonly held opinion – that if something is free, users are not entitled to criticise it and to have any expectations regarding its quality –, we believe that only high quality is in accordance with the noble act of giving something for free – the concept of a gift. For this reason, our courses quality is for us an overriding choice, that if we fail to put it into practice, all the rest — free access to knowledge, removal of social barriers to learning, etc. – will be just words.
Here at Mathesis we pursue quality, precisely because we believe that equalising opportunities in education and learning is among the noblest goals worth serving.