Language Centre online course 'Introduction to Dutch' in Top 50 MOOCs of All Time

The free online Introduction to Dutch language course of the University of Groningen Language Centre has made it into the Top 50 MOOCs of All Time according to Class Central. The list is based on thousands of reviews written by Class Central users.

Since the launch of Class Central in 2011, the website reported only 18 or so free online courses, which were all from Stanford University. Nowadays, there are close to 6,000 MOOCs from more than 600 universities around the world.

The University of Groningen Language Centre is very proud that Introduction to Dutch is one of the most popular rated courses, according to the users of Class Central. There are only 12 courses in the Humanities section of which two are languages courses, Dutch and Chinese. The University of Groningen finds itself among universities such as Yale, Harvard, Warwick and Cape Town and Tsinghua University.

According to Class Central, language learning courses are a rather new phenomenon in the MOOC landscape. This is also true for FutureLearn . Introduction to Dutch was the first foreign online language course on FutureLearn in March 2015, and has since attracted more than 120,000 learners. Currently, FutureLearn is offering more language courses such as Italian, Spanish and even Frisian, the second official language in the Netherlands. Introduction to Dutch and Introduction to Frisian are offered by the University of Groningen.