Delft University attracts one million students for its online courses

DutchNews, July 20, 2016

Photo: Depositphotos.com 

Delft University of Technology has signed up its one millionth student for its online lecture or Massive Open Online Course programme.

The university launched its first courses, on solar energy and water treatment, in September 2013. It now offers 36 different MOOCs, ranging from ‘leadership for engineers’ to aerospace. There is even a programming class, in Dutch, geared towards children ages 8 and up 

Students can select which courses to take via edX, a non-profit platform for online education that is also used by MIT, Harvard and other universities to make their courses available to anyone on the planet with access to the internet. 

Some 20% of Delft’s subscribers hail from the United States and 13% are based in India. The most popular course so far has been solar energy, which has drawn 131,000 enrolments. Creative Problem Solving, the second most popular, has attracted 113,000. 

‘We are now working hard on the next step: ensuring that our students can earn credits for MOOCs from Delft, as well as those from partner universities and vice versa,’ the university vice president Anka Mulde told TU Delta magazine. 

‘This means that they will gain access to a wide range of courses from top lecturers around the world. The challenge lies in agreeing on which courses we recognise and how many credits our students can earn in a certain phase of their degree programme.’