The term SPOC stands for Small Private Online Course. An SPOC is an online course that is accessible to a limited group of students. In SPOCs, the emphasis lies on interactive online education. At Utrecht University, SPOCs are usually published on the LifeLong Learning platform. Students and staff can access this platform directly using a SolisID. SPOCs on the Lifelong Learning platform can also be offered for course credit.

If you would like to create an SPOC on the platform, Educate-it can help you. Our educational consultants can advise you on how you can develop a good online course on the LifeLong Learning platform, and what you need to do this. In addition to providing bespoke educational advice, Educate-it can also bring you into contact with the right experts at the university, who can help you develop an online course (SPOC), such as video experts to help record and edit anything from knowledge clips to animations.

If you would like to learn more about creating an SPOC, please feel free to contact Aleid de Jong (a.y.dejong@uu.nl).

An MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is an online course that is open to anyone. That means ‘learners’ around the world can follow the MOOC free of charge, even if they’re not enrolled in an educational institution. Utrecht University has already developed seven MOOCs under the coordination of Educate-it, each one linked to one of the university’s four research themes: Sustainability, Life Sciences, Institutions and Dynamics of Youth. These MOOCs are currently available on Coursera: Humans Rights for Open Societies, Professionalism in an era of change, Understanding child development: from synapse to society, Unravelling solutions for Future Food problems, Inequality and Democracy, Clinical Epidemiology and Ebola: Essential Knowledge for Health Professionals.

The MOOCs developed by Utrecht University are currently offered to people around the world as an introduction to the university’s curriculum. Utrecht University does not yet offer MOOCs for course credit, but in some cases parts of the MOOCs are being re-used as study materials for on-campus courses.

For more information about MOOCs at UU, please visit the UU corporate website.

If you would like to learn more about creating an MOOC, please feel free to contact Aleid de Jong (a.y.dejong@uu.nl).

Utrecht University also offers the opportunity to open your online course to students from other universities in the Netherlands and abroad. Through the Virtual Exchange programme, UU participates in an alliance of international universities that offer a selection of online courses. These courses are intended for their own students, but are also open to students from other universities. When a student successfully completes the course, he or she receives a grade and course credit. This allows students to go on a ‘virtual exchange’, without having to travel to the university where the course is offered. Utrecht University aims to offer online courses as part of the alliance starting from mid-2020, and to give students from UU the opportunity to earn course credit through online courses offered by other universities. The university will also virtually welcome students from the partner universities.

If you’re interested in offering a course via Virtual Exchange or would like to know more about the programme, please feel free to contact Mirne van der Cammen (m.l.vandercammen@uu.nl).

If you would like to develop an online course or SPOC for professionals or alumni via the LifeLong Learning platform, please contact Utrecht University’s LifeLong Learning programme, which focuses on offering education to professionals.

For more information, contact Floor Hofhuis (F.C.M.Hofhuis@uu.nl).