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University of Adelaide launches free wine class online with 10,000 enrollees

Published:  13 July, 2016

University of Adelaide in Australia launched its online class World of Wine: From Grape to Glass, which is free to enroll and has already had 10,000 students enlisted.

The course which is offered on the AdelaideX platform this year is a free six-week long, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and nearly 40,000 student participated in it from 160 countries last year.

"We thought our target audience last year was going to be the average wine consumer and we totally missed that there is a lot of people who work in the industry, whether it's in administrative roles or cellar door, so we ended up with a lot of people who were working in the industry but didn't have any formal qualifications," explained Kerry Wilkinson, an Associate Professor of Oenology at the university.

The course requires between two to three hours of studying per week for six weeks.  It is comprised of short video lectures from University of Adelaide team as well as video interviews with industry professionals and there are several assessments throughout the course to evaluate learnings. There are also interactive components to the course including a virtual wine making application, discussion forums and sensorial videos to help educate students about different wine styles and how to evaluate them.

There is also a 'field trip' component. "Our biggest accomplishment is we've put a field trip in," said Wilkinson.

Students can click on different buildings on a three dimensional map of the Yalumba Winery to learn and see different aspects of winemaking that happen at an operational winery.

"It covers harvesting out in the vineyard through to the weighbridge, the laboratory, the cooperage where barrels are made, the wine tasting room, the bottling facility, the white and red cellars, the barrel hall and the nursery. It brings everything that we've talked about throughout the course together and lets people see how it looks in a commercial setting," said Wilkinson.

To enrol or learn more about the course and what is covered and required click here.

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