Northwestern is joining nine other top schools to launch an online course program for undergraduate students next fall, the University announced this morning.

The new initiative, called Semester Online, will allow participating universities to offer Web-based classes that almost exactly mirror how they are administered on campus, including the same professors and syllabi.

“These courses will expand curricular options for students and will enable consortium schools to work collaboratively to develop the most innovative and successful ways to utilize new learning technologies,” University Provost Daniel Linzer said in a news release.

The cost of the Internet classes will be included in tuition for the 12 universities in Semester Online’s founding consortium.

In addition to NU, Semester Online’s inaugural consortium includes Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Clarification: A previous version of this story characterized Semester Online’s offerings as massive online open courses, or MOOCs. The online courses provided by Semester Online are considered different from MOOCs.

— Patrick Svitek