RWTH Begins to Offer International Online Courses
RWTH Aachen will begin offering its first massive open online course or MOOC on the online learning platform “edX” in January. Professor Malte Brettel from the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group will be offering an English-language course titled “Introduction to Venture Capital: How to Get Money for your Startup”. The RWTH service unit Media for Learning designed its videos especially for the format, which makes learning possible regardless of time or location. By offering this course, the Aachen university is expanding its offering in the field of innovative teaching and learning formats and open course offerings online.
In June, the Aachen university joined edX, the nonprofit online learning destination, as a contributing Charter Member. Aachen will also contribute to the design and development of the learning platform. “We are honored to welcome RWTH Aachen University to edX,” said Anant Agarwal, edX CEO and MIT Professor. “As a leading technical university in Europe, Aachen will bring its educational content, expertise and research to a worldwide learning audience and will use its MOOCs to enhance the on campus learning experience as well.”
Other edX members include elite universities in the USA, the Sorbonne in Paris, EPFL Lausanne, the Technical University of Munich, and the IDEA League partners TU Delft, ETH Zürich, and Chalmers. MOOCs offer many advantages: With their online lectures they reach all interested individuals and can be accessed at any time. Various teaching methods can be employed and MOOCs can be recognized as complete university courses with the addition of exam testing.
Founded in 2012 by Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, MA, edX has more than six million learners from every country in the world and more than 700 courses available to learners everywhere. In the future internet users will also be able to participate in RWTH course offerings free of charge and without any formal prerequisites. Blended learning formats profit from close mentoring and consistent developmental work on university campuses. Dr. Marcus Gerards, project head of the unit Media for Learning: “Blending Learning unifies the advantages of teaching in a classroom with the comprehensive possibilities offered by video production and the internet.”
An open-source platform, edX promotes collaboration among its institutional members. The next steps in Aachen are the production of new courses and linking online lectures to electronic exams as well as establishing partnerships with other universities worldwide.
The goal of these efforts is to make teaching, research, and faculty at RWTH visible worldwide. “The new teaching methods will be an important topic in the university competition for excellence in the future,” emphasizes Rector Ernst Schmachtenberg.
RWTH Aachen University’s profile and edX course offerings at can be found at edX.
Source: Press and Communications