MOOCs of the University of Tartu have taken Estonian higher education to more than 70 countries

On 9 March, the University of Tartu launched its MOOC “About Programming” that is very popular among learners. Together with the MOOC “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” that started last week, the free e-courses of the University of Tartu have attracted more than 1000 people from Estonia and 70 other countries.

The leader of the first Estonian-language MOOC, lecturer of the Institute of Computer Science Eno Tõnisson said that as many as 650 people registered for the MOOC “About Programming” in only a couple of days.

“Although in the world, popular MOOCs may even have thousands of learners at the same time, we decided to limit the number of participants. We do not aim to offer an automated course, but wish to offer the learners also personal support, which requires people and time,” explained Tõnisson, emphasising that the priority is the quality of studies.

The MOOC “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” that started last week has 450 participants from 70 countries, the most exotic of which might be Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Jordan, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Zimbabwe. The course is in English and takes place already for the second time, led by Ivo Leito, Professor of the Institute of Chemistry.

In 2014, 270 people from 40 countries participated in Leito’s course. “As in 2014, the majority of current participants are from analytical laboratories, once again demonstrating the continuing need for training in measurement uncertainty estimation in analytical chemistry,” commented Professor Leito.

March saw the end of the English MOOC of the European College “Energy Policies in Europe”, which had more than 150 participants.

The University of Tartu continues developing and organising MOOCs. MOOCs are open for everyone and are thus very suitable for self-development between work, family and other studies.

The Estonian MOOC “About Programming” that attracted great interest will be organised again in October. People who could not register this time but cannot wait until October can access the course materials on https://courses.cs.ut.ee/2015/progmaa/spring.

In autumn semester also the English MOOC “Digital Image Processing” will be organised again. The next measurement uncertainty MOOC will most likely be organised in spring 2016. Until then, all course materials are available on https://sisu.ut.ee/measurement/uncertainty.

MOOC is a massive fully online course that is open for everybody without charge. Participants of a MOOC will be supervised and graded and can receive a certificate after successful completion of the course. The University of Tartu started offering MOOCs in 2014 as the first Estonian higher education.

Additional information: Lehti Pilt, Head of the UT Educational Technology Centre, tel: +372 737 6306, email: lehti.pilt@ut.ee.