Two million registrations for TU Delft MOOCs

TU Delft recorded its two-millionth registration for its free online courses (MOOCs). TU Delft now offers a range consisting of 88 MOOCs. Solar Energy was the first and has so far had 206,000 registrations. Data Analysis (162,000) and Solving Complex Problems (152,000) are also popular. The registrations have come from 1.27 million people worldwide, since some have taken more than one MOOC.

New MOOCs and repeats
TU Delft reached the one million registrations milestone two years ago, in July 2016. Each year, TU Delft develops several new online courses. The older ones are repeated once or twice a year and interested students can take them at their own pace in the meantime.

Worldwide

“The MOOCs continue to generate a lot of interest,” says Rob Mudde, Vice-Rector Magnificus/Vice-President of TU Delft, whose remits includes education. “We want to share our knowledge with people all over the world and we succeed in that: we reach people worldwide. Not every participant completes the MOOC, but that is not our aim or expectation. It’s no different to any textbook: not everyone reads it from cover to cover, but they still learn something in the process. That’s what matters to us.”

More interactive teaching on campus

TU Delft's regular students also benefit from the MOOCs, because they make the teaching more interactive. Students prepare at home using the MOOC, leaving more time in the lecture to explain complex aspects of the subject matter and practice it more (blended learning).

More educational innovation

The experience that TU Delft is gaining from the MOOCs serves as a springboard for other types of innovative education for a range of target groups. For example, TU Delft has been offering Professional Certificate Programmes since the start of this year, often developed in partnership with businesses in order to provide in-service training for their staff and other working professionals. The programmes consist of several concise online courses (approx. four hours/week, over four weeks). Whereas the form and content of MOOCs are based on a regular course taught at TU Delft (usually part of a Bachelor’s degree programme), these courses are tailored to the needs of working professionals, in terms both of content and duration.

Electric Cars

There are programmes in this category on such subjects as Electric Cars, Railway Engineering, Design in Health and Leadership for Engineers. The Electric Cars programme is currently the most popular. It was developed in collaboration with the Dutch Innovation Centre for Electric Road Transport (Dutch­INCERT). In it, lecturers from TU Delft and the business community share their knowledge. The programme is made up of four parts: Introduction, Technology, Business and Policy. Electric Cars has so far attracted 40,000 participants, 1,500 of whom have already obtained their certificates.

More information
For details of the latest range of MOOCs and courses for professionals, visit our website.
About the Professional Certificate Programme, Electric Cars.