The Massive Open Online Courses of the University of Groningen keep achieving good results!

Last month, MOOC moderator Class Central published its 2021 edition of Best Online Courses of All Time and the University of Groningen finds itself in 9th place (equal to Princeton) with six of its courses in the top 250.

The following courses featured in the top 250 courses ranking:

• Improving Your Study Techniques
• Introduction to Dutch
• Introduction to Frisian,
• Mutilingual Practices
• Understanding the GDPR
• Young People and Their Mental Health

Tom Spits, MOOC Coordinator at Educational Support and Innovation and co-designer of these courses, states that this is an exceptional result, considering that there are roughly 40,000 online courses out there. Being in the top 10 is an achievement the University can be very proud of.

The courses listed are very different in nature with Introduction to Frisian and Multilingual Practices catering to relatively small audiences, whereas Introduction to Dutch and Understanding the GDPR reach thousands of global learners every time. During COVID-19 we saw 10 times as many learners making use of Young People and Their Mental Health, clearly filling a need at the time.

The same goes for Improving Your Study Techniques, which is used by our own students as well as many learners worldwide. It is no surprise that the video Making a good study plan, which was made as part of this course, is the most watched video on the University of Groningen YouTube channel with 2 million views. We are clearly educating the world, and they seem to appreciate it.