Harvard and MIT Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses

Yuka S.

Posting #3Topic:  EducationTitle:  Harvard and MIT Team Up to Offer Free Online CoursesAuthor:  Tamar LewinPublication name:  NY TimesDate of publication:  May 2, 2012Length of article:  825 words


Main Ideas


On Wednesday, MIT and Harvard announced their new nonprofit partnership, edX, where free online courses from both universities will be accessible to students all over the world. EdX formed when Harvard got involved in a project that MIT started in December, called MITx. The first course offered by MITx, "Circuits and Electronics," began in March with about 120,000 students enrolled. Both edX and MITx offer certificates and grades, but no official credit. EdX will be overseen by a non-profit organization in Cambridge governed equally by both universities, since both MIT and Harvard committed $30 million to the program. The first president of edX will be Anant Agarwal, who developed the MITx platform and directs MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. From Harvard, Dr. Garver and Michael D. Smith will work with faculty members in order to develop and offer classes.  Eventually, MIT and Harvard will have other universities join in offering classes at edX, and edX will become a global online learning community where teaching and learning methods can be further researched.


MIT and Harvard started this program because massively open online courses (MOOC) are becoming increasingly popular among elite universities.

This month, Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new for-profit company called Coursera, which will also offer online courses.

Summary

EdX is a new nonprofit partnership between MIT and Harvard, which allows them to offer online courses to students all over the world for free. EdX will be managed by a non-profit organization in Cambridge, where president Anant Agarwal from MIT will work together with Dr. Garver and Michael D. Smith from Harvard, as well as other staff members, in order to develop and deliver classes. Eventually, other universities will join edX, broadening the program into a global online learning community where researchers can look into various teaching and learning methods.