E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Today we reached a big milestone in our MOOC activities: one million enrollments! Just before Christmas of 2012 I was asked to start a small project to develop 4 MOOCs. On September 15th 2013 the first two DelftX MOOCs started on the edX platform. Now 3 years later we have developed 36 MOOCs (and more in the pipeline). I'm proud of the result and the impact this project has had.

With the development of the first courses we were figuring out the process on-the-go. This was trully an adventure, nowadays it is a fully organised and supported process. For most course teams it is a first time experience and if they listen to our advice and tips it will be a easy but still an intensive process. Off course not all course teams listen (they're academics) and that keeps us busy ;-). More than 80 lecturers have been involved in one or more MOOCs. And don't forget all those students that assisted the lecturers in developing the courses.

In these three years were we started with a small support team of 4 (Janine, Mark, Gijs and me) and have grown to the Extension School support team of more than 20 people. That group is not just supporting MOOCs but also OpenCourseWare, Professional Education, Online and blended education.

Infographic

To celebrate this milestone we have created a infographics. You can download it from our website. The data of three years of MOOCs is impressive:

1M course enrollments by 699.014 learners from 229 countries aging between 8 and 94 (average age is 29). These learners have watched 13.824.919 minutes of video (26 year and 104 days). We have issued 28.739 certificates. Average pass rate for the verified certificates is 69% (highest 81,5%). More than 100k surveys were submitted. Our learners appreciate our MOOCs with a 8 (out of 10). Some courses even score above 9.

Awards

When you start an initiative it is always great to receive external recognising for your course. And we did:

• Nuffic Orange Carpet Award 2014 (award for best initiative for internationalisation of Dutch education)
• 4 OpenMOOC Awards of the Open Education Consortium
• Wharton Regional Award for Europe in 2015

Conclusion

The small MOOC project has been a tremendous success for TU Delft. The impact is much bigger than anticipated at the start. And we will continue to develop our MOOCs in quantity and quality. Below is an graphical view of the enrollments per course.