Wind Energy Master - a fully online part-time programme

The need for continuing education is growing in our society as the work force has become more mobile and learning is a life-long process. Plans for new wind power installations around the world are extremely ambitious for the coming decades [1-2] and this creates an immediate demand for skilled engineers with specialized knowledge [3].

The demand may partly be addressed through an increase of life long learning opportunities and a greater variety of study modes like part-time, distance, and modular learning [4]. Higher education is entering a new era where practical skills and contact to the rapidly evolving labor market may be valued as much as traditional rankings and accreditation [5].

Online competency-based education has an enormous disruptive potential in this context. Enrollment fees for traditional university programmes are soaring in countries like the US and UK and a new market for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) clearly reflects this. The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) offers a successful MOOC called ‘Wind Energy’, which has been completed by more than 2.000 learners so far.

Analytics from the MOOC show that approximately 50% of the learners are already employed in a full-time job. This is an indicator of the market for online continuing education in the field of wind energy and has been a great motivation for establishing a full online Master’s programme about wind energy engineering at DTU.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a concept for an online part-time programme, which is currently used for education in wind energy and holds a potential for application within other engineering disciplines. Similarities and differences are examined between i) the online teaching and learning experience as opposed to education in a physical setting, and ii) a part-time programme for continuing education as opposed to full-time university programmes.

The question is: Can an online Master’s programme for continuing education be used to build up capacity within engineering disciplines?