This article describes the practical implementation of parts of Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Designing Teaching and Learning by A.W. Bates (2015) in a course for educators in Austria and the development of medical education for universities in Iran. With the publication of the second edition of Teaching in a Digital Age in 2019, the authors show the impact of the book in training educators and educational developers. This article emphasizes the benefits of making decisions about educational technologies using Bates’ SECTIONS model and of learning about massive open online courses (MOOCs). This article is an international research that has been able to introduce the national MOOC of Iran in the form of joint and multiple international research worldwide. The use of an international book in two universities in Austria and Iran is one of the highlights of this research. Teaching in a Digital Age introduces the principles of effective teaching in a digital age and provides instructors with a framework for teaching and learning using technology. Chapter 5 the book “Teaching in a Digital Age” with the title MOOCs selected as reference for 13th National Scientific Olympiad for Medical Sciences Students Iran 2021 in the field of medical education. This article was published in the IRRODL Journal, a highly international magazine at the Q1 level (The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, editor-in-chief, Dr.Rory McGreal). IRRODL is in the top 10% of most-cited Educational journals and is the highest-ranked Canadian education journal and 8th-highest open-access education journal in SJR, also has a JCR impact factor of 2.297 and according to Google Scholar in 2020, has a ranking of 5th among Educational Technology Journals and a rank of 7th of all Education Journals. This article was reviewed by Dr. Tony Bates, a contemporary distance education theorist (on the personal website with thousands of views), and by Dr. Stephen Downes, the inventor of the cMOOC and Connectivism on OLDaily in Canada. In this research, Dr. Tony Bates has also contributed to Dr. Mohsen Keshavarz in the section on Iran. The news of the publication of this article was published in the Ontario Contact North ǀ Contact Nord weekly on April 21, 2021, and the article information will be published in the next Merlot newsletter in September, issue 49, 2021(Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching is a program of the California State University in the USA). This article was considered by the international community and distance education researchers, especially in the MOOCs field.
