MIT and Harvard announce edX

coolweather · 05-02-2012, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Harvard University and MIT today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.

EdX will build on both universities’ experience in offering online instructional content. The technological platform recently established by MITx, which will serve as the foundation for the new learning system, was designed to offer online versions of MIT courses featuring video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories and student-paced learning. Certificates of mastery will be available for those who are motivated and able to demonstrate their knowledge of the course material.

http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/mit-ha...ouncement.html

parent1986 · 05-03-2012, 12:20 AM

This is about a week after the online Stanford free program announced multi-millions in venture capital backing.

If you sign up for or just look at an MIT class (which are boring, outdated videos - at least those I have looked at), they solicit you for money. The free Stanford classes don't.

collegealum314 · 05-03-2012, 12:51 AM

^You are probably thinking of OpenCourseware, not MITx (or EdX).

There is currently only one class on MITX: circuits and electronics (6.02.)

parent1986 · 05-03-2012, 01:02 AM

Could be, thanks!^^^ Have also just noticed an email from "Coursera", announcing a free online partnership between Stanford, Princeton, Michigan and Penn - multi-discipline with 40 eventual classes online. Five are being launched now.

mommusic · 05-03-2012, 05:28 AM

It's good that "certificates of master" will be available. Cause otherwise the difference between online courses and live ones might be that crucial $200,000-plus piece of paper...

parent1986 · 05-03-2012, 06:25 AM

^^^If you are quoting from the above citation (#1), it is "certificate of mastery", not "certificate of master", and will probably be worth nothing in terms of a valuable credential.

These are more like adult education courses, imo.

Wildwood11 · 05-03-2012, 07:42 AM

Welcome to the future, folks! I'm pretty sure this is how my grandchildren will some day be receiving most of their higher education.

tortoise · 05-03-2012, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wildwood11

Welcome to the future, folks! I'm pretty sure this is how my grandchildren will some day be receiving most of their higher education.

Or your children, if they're still in middle
school. This tsunami is going to hit higher ed. harder and faster than most would imagine.

mommusic · 05-03-2012, 07:55 AM

parent1986--of course I meant "mastery," excuse my typo.

Wildwood11 · 05-03-2012, 08:00 AM

^^Nope, already in college. But I do wonder about my nieces, who are currently in elementary school. I think they will hit an awkward transition period in which my sister, who is prepared to send them to private colleges, will have to weigh the cost/benefits of the traditional campus experience and the much cheaper, and by then much more perfected, online option.

familyof3boys · 05-03-2012, 09:52 AM

Yale already offers free online classes. No certificate (but doubt its value)

Wildwood11 · 05-03-2012, 10:20 AM

It is one thing to offer lectures for college courses online which MIT and other schools have been doing for a while, and quite another to develop courses specifically for online completion and credit. The latter may include interactive questioning, exercises and quizzes, links to multimedia and original sources, the monitoring of progress by profs and TAs, chat or webcam discussion groups and yet to be developed ways of taking advantage of this type of learning.

The element that will be the trickiest to implement is the logistics of exams--there has to be some kind of control of testing, perhaps at designated centers in many locations, sort of in the way standardized testing is carried out now.

parent1986 · 05-03-2012, 10:29 AM

mommusic#9 - I pointed that out, because I think the intention of the name is to trick readers into thinking it is worth more than it is. There exists a "real" Master degree, but I have never heard of a Mastery degree.

barrons · 05-03-2012, 11:36 AM

"Welcome to the future, folks! I'm pretty sure this is how my grandchildren will some day be receiving most of their higher education. "

Seriously not going to happen. At most you might have a two-tiered system of those that go to real college and those who go online.

tortoise · 05-03-2012, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wildwood11

^^Nope, already in college. But I do wonder about my nieces, who are currently in elementary school. I think they will hit an awkward transition period in which my sister, who is prepared to send them to private colleges, will have to weigh the cost/benefits of the traditional campus experience and the much cheaper, and by then much more perfected, online option.

Yes, agree 100%