This paper reports on the experiences from online courses in applied statistics. The courses were designed with the ambition of making studies in statistics, fun, interesting, useful, not that difficult and directly supported the possibility to combine studies and work. When designing the courses we considered three dimensions: "pedagogies","community" and "structure". Experiences after giving a first-year course three times show that the online course succeeds in attracting new studen ts since 90% of the participants would not be able to follow an on-campus course and 62% worked full time.

The pedagogies were highly appreciated because focusing on the interpretation of results and using computer analyses really changed the prejudices about statistics. Structure and prompt feedback was experienced as important factors. It was possible to combine online studies with employment, and the student completion rate was (84%, 55% and 61%), with a potential for further improvements.