Online learning as a future of the education

It goes without saying that the world today is embracing the power of online education through the e-platforms like Coursera, Khan Academy and many more interactive educational tools that are at disposal of new generations.

 Before Coursera, for example, education was restricted to schools, universities, colleges, etc. Time constraints, unaffordable tuitions fees, geographical boundaries were limiting an access to the qualitative education. Not anymore.

Well, the purpose of this article is not merely explaining the new world we live in or comparing a conventional/traditional way of studying with the new possibilities. It is rather my subjective evaluation of the possibilities of the online education.

The six-weeks course "Industrial biotechnology" offered by TUDelft triggered my curiosity since I majored many years ago in "Industrial biotechnology" following a traditional university pathway back in Ukraine.

My initial goal was to explore the possibilities of the online learning, to spot the differences, to find out the recent developments in that branch of the biotechnology, to refresh the old knowledge and to determine whether that particular course would challenge me in any possible way.  

After six weeks of watching lectures, completing assignments, performing miscellaneous calculations I realized that online learning is a future of an education. The course did challenge me in many surprising ways. I not only refreshed some old "dust-laden" knowledge  but also gained new insights about biobased economy and learned some useful tools which I may be able to apply in my daily engineering activities.

The possibility to determine the studying pace, structured manner of delivering information, interesting assignments convinced me that this kind of courses may be great tools to enhance one's skills and is an integral part of one's personal development programme.

Having achieved the passing grade and having obtained the certificate I look back at the variety of "industrial biotechnology" topics covered during six weeks: best practices throughout the world, feedstocks, microorganisms and microbial growth rates, mass balances, aerobic and anaerobic processes, fermentor design, gas and heat transport, mixing, simulation software SuperPro Designer, upstream and downstream integration, sustainability evaluation and many more. In six weeks one gains the basics of all above-mentioned topics! 

Thumbs up, TUDelft!  

This is a future our kids would face up. This is a present we live in. I totally convinced that online education can at least complement the traditional educational pathway or even compete with it in the future.