Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Worldwide

in Harvard, MIT, Online Courses | May 2nd, 2012 9 Comments

It all start­ed ear­ly last fall. Sebas­t­ian Thrun went a lit­tle rogue (oh the audac­i­ty!) and start­ed offer­ing free online cours­es under Stan­ford’s ban­ner to mass audi­ences, with each course promis­ing a “state­ment of accom­plish­ment” at the end. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of stu­dents signed up, and uni­ver­si­ties every­where took notice.

Since then we have wit­nessed uni­ver­si­ties and star­tups scram­bling fair­ly mad­ly to cre­ate their own MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), hop­ing to gain a foothold in a new area that could even­tu­al­ly dis­rupt edu­ca­tion in a major way. In Decem­ber, MIT announced the cre­ation of MITx, promis­ing free cours­es and a “cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion” to stu­dents world­wide. Sebas­t­ian Thrun left Stan­ford to cre­ate Udac­i­ty, and anoth­er Stan­ford spin­off, Cours­era, gained instant trac­tion when it announced in April that it had raised $16 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal and signed part­ner­ships with Prince­ton, Penn and U Michi­gan.

Now comes the lat­est news. MIT has teamed up with its Cam­bridge neigh­bor, Har­vard, to cre­ate a new non prof­it ven­ture, EDX. To date, Har­vard has bare­ly dab­bled in open edu­ca­tion. But it’s now throw­ing $30 mil­lion behind EDX (M.I.T. will do the same), and togeth­er they will offer free dig­i­tal cours­es world­wide, with stu­dents receiv­ing the oblig­a­tory cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery at the end. The EDX plat­form will be open source, mean­ing it will be open to oth­er uni­ver­si­ties. Whether EDX will replace MITx, or sit uncom­fort­ably beside it, we’re not entire­ly sure (though it looks like it’s the for­mer).

Class­es will begin next fall. And when they do, we’ll let you know … and, of course, we’ll add them to our mas­sive col­lec­tion of 450 Free Online Cours­es.

For more infor­ma­tion, you can watch the EDX press con­fer­ence here and read an FAQ here.

via The Har­vard Crim­son and MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List


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Comments (9)
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  • Tanner Christensen says:
    May 2, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    The edu­ca­tion land­scape is chang­ing, just as the music, film, writ­ing, and almost every oth­er has (or cur­rent­ly is).

    I won­der if more edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions will hop on the wag­on faster than the record­ing indus­try. More than that, though, I won­der what Sir Ken Robin­son would say about this ini­tia­tive.

    Reply
  • M.Hayes says:
    May 4, 2012 at 5:53 am

    Has any­one noticed the major Ego \ Resent­ment with­in the edu­ca­tion world and from 4 6 or 8 year degree hold­ers against Career Dri­ven Cours­es, that actu­al­ly earn a degree, with­out the years of “worth­less” (and I use worth­less very loose­ly) edu­ca­tion before you learn what the real world is NOT like, usu­al­ly attached to them? I would like to know every­one’s think­ing on this. CEO’s and Busi­ness Own­er’s would you rather hire a “grad-stu­dent” or a career-ori­ent­ed degree hold­er?

    Reply
  • Margine says:
    June 24, 2012 at 7:55 pm

    Does any­one know what are the cours­es or can some­one give the links? I want to know what are the cours­es and when they start and so forth.

    Reply
  • Helmuts says:
    June 28, 2012 at 6:16 pm

    wow, tx for the infor­ma­tion.

    I have signed up for “Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es”

    still — there is no infor­ma­tion when exact­ly this course will start although a lot of infor­ma­tion is avail­able right now.

    thank you for this infor­ma­tion,
    Hel­muts
    Out­lived Clas­si­fieds

    Reply
  • Aremu says:
    August 30, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    How do i start the appli­ca­tion process.
    Thanks

    Reply
  • Datta says:
    April 1, 2013 at 10:16 pm

    Does any­one expli­an about the process..

    Reply
  • Denys says:
    April 6, 2013 at 4:40 am

    Hi
    Good site .But we want also logis­tics cours­es
    Thanks

    Reply
  • Gurjender singh says:
    December 11, 2013 at 11:39 pm

    Thanks for your great infor­ma­tion, the con­tents are qui­et interesting.I will be wait­ing for your next post.nnfree online cours­es

    Reply
  • Nimal says:
    January 26, 2014 at 5:27 am

    I wish to fol­low your cours­es for get a degree from you

    Reply

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