After the summer holidays the School of Engineering, Aarhus University will offer a full online engineering degree programme targeted at traditional prospective students. But also skilled workman or others, who want to further their education, but are not about to quit their job and begin studying.

Meet and greet

With the exception of a few days, the prospective students have the opportunity to take the three-and-a-half-year long degree programme as electronics engineer exclusively in cyberspace.

"The students will be working in groups on different projects during the course and it is best if they have already met one another. So we have organised things so that they must meet up on the AU Herning campus at the beginning of the degree programme to get to know the others in the class," explains Michael Bergholz Knudsen from the School of Engineering.

"Also, at the end of the course the students have to meet up on campus in connection with some of their exams. But otherwise they will study in cyberspace," he continues.

Two-year pilot project

For the past two years, online teaching has been tested in pilot projects at the School of Engineering. According to Mikael Bergholz Knudsen, the students have a positive attitude to the flexible form of instruction.

"I must say I’ve not heard of anybody involved in the pilot projects saying anything negative about them." 

If the online degree programme for electronic engineering students is a success, it would make sense to offer more online engineering degree programmes, explains Mikael Bergholz Knudsen.

"Being able to educate more students who can leave university and be useful to society is a motivating factor, especially because there is a big shortage of electronic engineers. Virtually all of them have found work within six months, while other engineering graduates also have a low level of unemployment." 

Facts

The method of learning is called “Flipped Classroom” and it forms the basis of the online electronic engineering programme at Aarhus University School of Engineeringt.

Flipping the classroom Explained (video: 1:48 min.)