As part of our educational and popularisation activities, we at LHL are currently working on 
a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). These are networked educational activities, universally available to an unlimited number of people, with basically no territorial or time restrictions. MOOC courses are based on active and interactive teaching, using thematic videos available to participating students together with the entire educational component necessary in lecturer-student, and student-student (e.g. via discussion platforms) perspectives. This material can be supplemented with additional elements such as exercises, case studies, compilations and selections of sources, translations, and others. Audio-video transmissions, including podcasts, can be supported with animations, graphics, etc. A necessary element of the MOOC is a module for evaluating course participants’ acquired knowledge and achievement of goals. This will be accomplished through such means as quizzes, tests, descriptive forms, so-called drop-boxes for uploading files, etc.
There is no doubt that this innovative method of didactic communication, through its mass accessibility, interactivity, and audio-visual attractiveness, is ideally suited to the needs of the contemporary generation of students. Moreover, due to the methodology and the approach to conveying the message, which is so easily comprehensible to the current generation, we are also able to reach high school pupils, thereby making the material available to them as a valuable addition to didactics in the field of history and social studies. It could also contribute to popularising subject material that is otherwise relatively rare in public communication. It would obviously promote a broader familiarity with legal culture, the low level of which has long been a subject of widespread complaint. The course could help future students in taking the difficult decision as to what programs to pursue in their future studies and where. The MOOC we are developing is an indirect form between an online lecture, a podcast, and an e-book, and corresponds to basic precepts of the reform of legal studies at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University, where modern, interactive forms of media are supposed to be complementary to traditional lecture formats.

The main theme of our MOOC – the legal heritage of the continent and its influence on the modern times – was dictated on the one hand by the profile of the Heritage Lab, and on the other hand by a strong belief in the continued relevance of the paradigm of the fundamental values of European legal culture, originating in the ancient Hellenic world, Roman law, and Christianity. Its translation into the mechanisms of today's societies, particularly in relation to the categories of freedom, democracy, justice, equity, education, normative socialisation and, moreover, the functioning of the state, the legislature, and the judiciary, requires discussion. With a background of numerous crises of statehood, and confronted with revolutionary social transformations – the question of the present-day meaning of the continent's legal heritage takes on particular significance. A team consisting of legal historians, Romanists, comparatists, historians of doctrines and ideas, and sociologists of law, as well as dogmatists is developing a course presenting the legal heritage of Europe. We hope that the course will gain in popularity with future student populations, and develop extensively in coming years.
Taking care not to lock ourselves into a historical environment, we invited faculty members from all faculties of the university to participate in its development. 
We see opportunities in connecting seemingly disparate disciplines. We endeavour to convey knowledge in a simple and understandable way. We learn from the heritage of the past. We will explore, for example, whether Machiavelli synthesised the views of Aristotle and Cicero, and whether politics can be moral. What are any meaningful differences between the way miscreants were punished in the past as opposed to methods used today? If a crime is committed by accident, is it actually a crime? Have lawyers always been lawyers, and are they obliged to defend everyone? Where did diplomatic protocol come from? Was the environment also protected in the past? When the judiciary sets out to interpret the law how does it know what the intent of the legislature was when it promulgated the law? Is morality important for public administration? How ought one live in order to be worthy of inheritance? Does the Supreme Court of the Republic of Poland follow the rules sculpted on its building ?
Knowledge of the historical changes in social phenomena, especially law, is of no use if it does not serve to change things for the better. These changes must be preceded by public acceptance and awareness before they take any place in the legislative process. We would therefore like to invite you – soon – to participate in our MOOC!   

Łukasz Marzec