TU Delft, the largest and oldest public technological university in the Netherlands, announced this week that it has reached 1 million enrollments, with an average age of 29, in its 36 MOOCs in science, design and engineering since 2013.
- MOOCs’ content is typically derived from classes given in TU Delft’s regular degree programs. At the university level, “these open courses have been used to enable students to attend the lectures online so classroom hours are dedicated to in-depth discussion of the course material, rather than to knowledge transfer”.
- Some companies, such as Royal Haskoning DHV and Capgemini, have used the MOOCs internally as part of company training.
- TU Delft has released MOOCs for children, too. The MOOC in Dutch “Scratch, programmeren voor kinderen (8+)” (Scratch, programming for kids (8+)), started on June 15, has attracted 2,500 kids.
- “Solar Energy” by Arno Smets, TU Delft’s first MOOC, in 2013, has reached 130,000 enrollments and has been translated into Arabic on the Jordanian edraak.org platform, with the goal to adopt solar energy as an energy source in the Middle East. The course teaches how to install a photovoltaic system using solar panels, and so contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Anka Mulder, vice-president of TU Delft and the driving force behind the MOOCs at the university, has announced that for-credit MOOCs are next.
‘We are now working hard on the next step: ensuring that our students can earn credits for MOOCs of TU Delft, as well as for those from partner universities and vice versa. 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 recognize and how many credits our students can earn in a certain phase of their degree program.’
The following are the course enrollments at Delft:
Course |
Number of Runs |
Total |
| Solar Energy | 4 | 131.789 |
| Creative Problem Solving & Decision Making | 3 | 112.972 |
| Data Analysis to the MAX() | 3 | 106.794 |
| Functional Programming | 2 | 62.581 |
| Aeronautical Engineering | 4 | 60.951 |
| Introduction to Credit Risk Management | 3 | 51.549 |
| Pre-University Calculus | 3 | 48.338 |
| Framing : How Politicians Debate | 2 | 47.114 |
| Product Design: Delft Design Approach | 3 | 38.390 |
| Data Analysis: Building Your Own Business Dashboard | 2 | 35.997 |
| Leadership for Engineers | 1 | 29.868 |
| Introduction to Water Treatment | 1 | 29.179 |
| Data Analysis: Visualization and Dashboard Design | 1 | 24.343 |
| Drinking Water Treatment | 3 | 23.812 |
| Industrial Biotechnology | 3 | 23.232 |
| Treatment of Urban Sewage | 3 | 21.886 |
| NGI 1 | 1 | 20.534 |
| Water & climate | 3 | 19.415 |
| Circular Economy: an introduction | 2 | 14.113 |
| Responsible Innovation | 2 | 13.997 |
| Sustainable Urban Development | 1 | 10.958 |
| Transport Phenomena | 2 | 8.913 |
| Image | Ability: visualising the Unimaginable | 2 | 8.252 |
| Topology in Condensed Matter: Tying Quantum Knots | 2 | 7.268 |
| Building with Nature | 2 | 7.081 |
| The Next Generation of Infrastructure | 2 | 7.065 |
| Next Generation Infrastructures part 2 | 1 | 6.233 |
| Geoscience: the earth and its resources | 1 | 5.324 |
| Open Government | 1 | 4.080 |
| Sustainable Energy: Designing a Renewable Future | 1 | 3.486 |
| Quantum Cryptography | 1 | 3.343 |
| Project Management of Engineering Projects | 1 | 3.138 |
| ScratchX: programmeren voor kinderen | 1 | 2.695 |
| Design Practice in Business | 1 | 2.578 |
| Understanding Nuclear Energy | 1 | 1.482 |
| Observation Theory: Estimating the Unknown | 1 | 1.429 |
| Total | 70 | 1.000.179 |
The images below reflect Delft’s success.
