Education
- Develop and deliver continuing education in alignment with the University’s strategy and in collaboration with the faculties
- Manage the Quality Assurance of the Extension School's portfolio
The Extension School's online courses and programs help thousands of learners worldwide. We aim to prepare many, such as high school students, the next generation of researchers, and people in various stages of their professional life, for their next step. In particular, we deliver expert knowledge and applicable skills for engineers, supporting working professionals to stay on top of their game – whether they are looking to change career, broaden their skillset, or acquire further academic qualifications. Our offering comes in a range of flexible formats, comprising massive open online courses (MOOCs), online academic courses, professional development courses and short programs, and a MicroMasters®.
Strategic portfolio for societal impact
Our continuing education offer is aligned with the University's strategy and developed in close collaboration with the faculties, combining TU Delft’s academic expertise with industry and learners’ needs. Our portfolio thus comprises a number of themes with high market and societal relevance. With the introduction of the Skills for Engineers theme, we now also offer a set of courses whereby professionals acquire a specific range of skills that are useful right across the entire engineering umbrella. It covers dedicated courses in leadership and strategic communication, stakeholder and project management, business models, decision-making, data strategies, and ethical responsibility – which support our learners in excelling in engineering roles, projects, and activities. In addition, we developed a strategic roadmap for each portfolio theme, which takes into account industry developments, learners' needs, TU Delft’s strategic priorities, and the desire to positively contribute to the UN Global Development Goals; plans for implementation will be rolled out in the coming year.
MOOCs Global Coverage
Over 200 countries worldwide
Top 10 countries by number of enrolments in 2021
3.3 Million overall enrollments
of which 286,057 in our MOOCs in 2021
New courses and programs launched in 2021
Professional Certificate Programs (PCPs)
- Big Data to Insights: Scalable Processing of Large Data Repositories & Streams
- Inclusive and Sustainable Cities
- Science and Engineering Prep: Pre-University Calculus and Physics
- Virtual Lab: Solar and Chemical Energy Conversion for Green Hydrogen
- Water and Ports, Historic Cities and Landscapes
Professional Education Courses (ProfEds)
- Road Safety
- Spatial Circularity Strategies for Sustainable Regional Development
- Urban Air Mobility
- Virtual Lab: Large-Scale PV Systems with Hydrogen-Based Storage
- Virtual Lab: Photovoltaic System and Electronic Components
- Virtual Lab: Small-Scale PV Systems with Electrical Storage
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
- AI in Practice - Applying AI
- Automóviles eléctricos: Negocios
- Automóviles eléctricos: Politica
- Automóviles eléctricos: Technologia
- Building Inclusive Cities: Tackling Urban Inequality and Segregation
- Comfort and Health in Buildings
- Critical Raw Materials: Managing Resources for a Sustainable Future
- Designing a Climate Neutral World: An Introduction
- Designing Electronics for Recycling in a Circular Economy
- Efficient HVAC Systems
- Ethical Dilemmas in Professional Engineering
- Fundamentals of Quantum Information
- Global Housing Design
- Multidisciplinary Research Methods for Engineers
- Pre-University Physics
- (Re)Imagining Port Cities: Understanding Space, Society and Culture
- Sustainable Aviation: The Route to Climate-Neutral Aviation
- Water Works: Activating Heritage for Sustainable Development
18 new MOOCs 6 new ProfEds 5 new Programs
certificates in 2021
MOOC 16,841
ProfEd 905
Program 879
75% use on campus
240 academic experts
in the pipeline for 2022
11 new MOOCs
6 new ProfEds
Open Campus Essentials supports pandemic-affected institutions
Following on from the success of the Remote Access Program in 2019, the Extension School has been supporting academic institutions worldwide by providing a free, curated selection of 20 MOOCs as part of the edX’s Open Campus Essential initiative. Launched in June 2021, this has been extended to June 2022, enabling more colleges and universities around the world to give their students continuity of access to high-quality education, for longer. This educational support is of particular relevance for the thousands of institutions that are still affected by the covid-19 pandemic and face a lack of resources and technological solutions.
New program prepares students for university studies
To help high-school students bridge the gap between their knowledge of physics and the approach and language used for it at university, in June we launched a new online course: Pre-University Physics. We also combined it with the existing Pre-university Calculus course in a free, new online program. this prepares students for university-level mathematics and physics and shows them how they are used in different engineering and science disciplines. It is valuable for any student wishing to pursue an engineering degree, irrespective of their coming from a Dutch or another international education system, and further broadens our reach to support even more students worldwide and thus contribute to their study success.
Learning Experience Team
Our new Learning Experience Team (LET), comprised of specially trained teaching assistants, officially started work on 1 July. The team unburdens lecturers when developing and offering online education by centrally taking care of the full operation and moderation of the course re-runs (with the exclusion of our Online Academic Courses), including learner engagement and the course evaluation process. Whilst the lecturers remain ultimately responsible for the course content, this type of support allows us to offer courses more often without this entailing extra work for the lecturers. The new service has been well received and by the end of 2021, LET was already supporting 35 MOOC re-runs from six of TU Delft’s faculties, with more requests coming in every month.
Support on campus
During the year, we continued to support campus education, including through the organisation of a rolling series of weekly webinars for lecturers, the monthly offering of the Designing an Online Course and Teaching an Online Course dedicated training, and by providing expert advice about tools and platforms, student engagement, and a quality learning experience. Offered in collaboration with the Teaching and Learning Services team, the webinars centre on educational topics of interest with a strong focus on applicability; popular subjects are video creation and working with audio from home, student engagement, assessments, and the hybrid format. Overall, we delivered more than 70 unique sessions and a hands-on ‘emergency toolkit’ of online teaching resources to help lecturers quickly move their campus courses to the online, blended, or hybrid mode.
Quality Assurance developments
In 2021, we appointed a Quality Assurance Officer who has been working on a Quality Assurance plan and cycle for continuing online education, also in close collaboration with the newly appointed members of our QA Board. Going forward, the Officer will continue to liaise with professional associations for the accreditation of our online courses and programs.
An example of this is the renewed certification of our professional education courses on wastewater and water treatment by the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), which has a website reach of over 100,000 users from more than 100 countries.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging the customer’s overall satisfaction with a company’s product or service and the customer’s loyalty to the brand.We ask the following NPS question and achieve very good scores across our portfolio.“Based on your complete experience with TU Delft Online Learning, on a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
Extension School for Continuing Education
Image credits (CC-BY): Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash, Polina Zimmerman on Pexels, Start Up Graphic Design on The Noun Project, Freepik on Flaticon, MRK on The Noun Project, Philippe Bout on Unsplash, Chris Montgomery on Unsplash, Markus Spiske on Unsplash.