EdX offering interesting new tech courses

EdX is a nonprofit project founded by MIT and Harvard universities that was created with the purpose of offering a free university-level online educational platform. Most of the new courses will start this upcoming fall of 2013 as the project is expanding into more interesting courses than the seven initial ones offered in the fall of 2012. That's why enrollment has continued to increase and is expected to stay that way based on the quality and relevance of the materials and courses being developed. 

After taking a glance at the new courses, and for someone having a special interest in tech education, it is clear that the new subjects are appealing to a somewhat more tech oriented audience. For instance, they are starting to offer courses like Software as a Service, Solar Energy, Innovation and Commercialization, Fundamentals of Neuroscience, among others.  In addition, they also have less techie oriented themes like Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, Health and Society, A Global History of Architecture or Copyright.

According to EdX president Anant Agarwal, their mission is to dramatically increase access to education for students around the world, and to offer them top level educational materials in the form of structured massive open online courses, or MOOC's. Even if no credit is being offered towards an MIT degree at the moment, Mr. Agarwal argues that students can get other forms of credit, like using the certificates they receive after completion to help them get admission to MIT or other universities since these courses are being licensed to higher-ed institutions. 

In a may 1st 2013 interview with the online learning publication Degree of Freedom, he stated:
"A second form of credit is that a number of our university partners have indicated that they are interested in giving campus credit for these courses." He added "Students will have to find a university willing to give credit." and "A number of students have been able to talk to the university directly and have gotten credit once they checked out the rigor of the course. So I think people have begun to get credit, and I think over time we will see more and more of it." Mr. Agarwal concluded.

The significance of this project is still being argued by some people, and there are those who have diverging ideas about the real reasons why institutions like Harvard or MIT are presenting compelling arguments to other universities like Stanford, Berkeley, or even some Asian, European and Australian universities to join the movement that is reaching worldwide proportions, with the rapid addition of these and other global educational institutions. 

Even though this is basically a huge experiment using a new global educational outreach strategy which brakes a lot of traditional "rules", there are millions of students willing to do it. After all, who would not like to take courses at a top level university, whether they live in America or in far away places such as Patagonia, Asia or Africa, and especially if they are available at virtually no cost to them. Although there is a symbolic price for the certificate if completed within the course length, the other option is to audit the classes, or simply enjoy the materials.

Copyright Esteban Dobronsky 2013 © All Rights Reserved