On Apr 16, 2015 the consortium Estonian e-University awarded the title “e-course of the year” to the web course (MOOC) Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis! This, together with the very positive feedback of the participants is a strong motivator for us to continue developing and delivering this course. Delivery of the next edition is planned in Spring 2016.

The 2015 edition of the “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” course finished on Sunday, Apr 19, 2015. The overall number of registered participants was 489 (from 70 countries). The majority of the participants were practitioners from analysis laboratories and industry. Sadly, in spite of the reminders, more than 200 of them never actually started the course. Out of the 279 participants who started their studies 169 completed the course successfully. Thus, the overall completion rate (with respect to registered participants) is 34% and the completion rate of the participants who started the course is 60%, which can be considered reasonably good. Clearly the most difficult tests were the ones of weeks 5 and 6 containing full-fledged measurement uncertainty estimation using the ISO GUM and the Nordtest approaches. The ability to carry out uncertainty estimation of such analyses is essential and we are glad that so many participants managed to successfully complete these tests!

There were many interesting discussions of which some are still ongoing. By interacting with the participants we also learned a lot and we again got good suggestions for developing the course.

Many thanks to all our participants, without whom all this would have never become true!

(Image: private collection)