What if you could have completed your masters from the comfort of your home? Imagine sitting in your own bedroom, while attending your lectures at TU Delft.
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Come September, that will be a reality for a new batch of students the world over. In the academic session 2013-2014, three TU Masters programme, from the faculty of Civil Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Technology, Policy and Management, will be available online as well on campus.
“Most courses consist of a set of web lectures, readings, assignments and assessments, all well-structured in our online learning environment. Live interaction between professors and students is important for master courses and will be facilitated. Besides some synchronous contact moments, communication will mainly take place asynchronously through discussion forums and e-mail. Students will be issued a course certificate of completion by the Delft University of Technology stating the course name and the number of EC obtained,” says Sofia Dopper, the project leader of the Masters project.
Dopper adds that for the pilot phase, they’re looking at a small number of students (10-15). Each MSc will have a section of courses, which can be followed online. However, during the first year students may need to come to Delft for some course components, such as examinations.
“We started the online Masters courses because the demand for higher education worldwide is rising enormously. We want to increase the accessibility of our Masters education by delivering it online, next to our campus education. We expect that online courses will attract international students as well as business people who would otherwise not come to our university for a course or master program,” she adds
Talking about the challenges of teaching online, Anke Grefte of the Watermanagement faculty says, “Practical work in the laboratory is also more difficult to do online, but at the Water Management track of civil engineering, we are now making some of the installations which the students use in the lab, remotely controlled. We will also use models instead of the real installation, but still there areskills that cannot be acquired online”.
Grefte says in the coming weeks professors will start recording lectures in the studio. “Though they are used to their classroom lectures being recorded, this will definitely ask some adjustment of our lecturers.”
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