The 91探花 announced May 21 a new partnership with , the Massive Open Online Course provider from Harvard/MIT.
These new 91探花online courses, under the name UWashingtonX, will be free and open to the public. The courses will be in addition to the such courses already available on , where the 91探花was an early innovator with both free and for-credit classes, announced in July 2012.
The 91探花plans to start with four new courses for edX, ready in January 2014. Courses under consideration will build on the university鈥檚 online teaching expertise since the 1990s that includes: more than a dozen Massive Open Online Courses launched in 2012-13, plus 15 , , 40 , 58 online undergraduate courses, and 14 other made available during the last decade.
In addition to Harvard and MIT, edX elite partners also include such universities as California, Berkeley; Georgetown; Toronto; Cornell; Boston and Texas, plus leading institutions in Asia, Europe and Australia. Each partner shares a commitment to transforming educational quality, efficiency and scale through technology and research for the benefit of campus-based students and the worldwide community of online and blended learners.
鈥淭he 91探花 remains committed to learning more about the impacts, reach, challenges and benefits of MOOCs,鈥� said 91探花President Michael K. Young. 鈥淎s a large, public research institution with a mission to increase access to education, we鈥檒l continue to explore the forefront of educational delivery, evaluate teaching and learning effectiveness, consider trends, and drive research to improve higher education. MOOCs are part of this, and joining with edX adds to our portfolio of high-quality, free offerings for the public.鈥�
Among institutions offering new Massive Open Online Courses the last year, the 91探花was the first university to provide a way for those online students to obtain credit. Many 91探花Coursera students are provided an option to convert from the free online courses to an enhanced, small cohort, instructor-led, 91探花online for-credit class that requires additional homework, assignments, evaluations, and a fee.
鈥淭he research focus and Harvard/MIT roots of edX will allow us to further our knowledge of MOOCs and their efficacy,鈥� said David P. Szatmary, vice provost of 91探花Educational Outreach. 鈥淎s a leader in online education, we want to help shape this important innovation and define what鈥檚 possible.鈥�
Currently, the 91探花offers 14 Massive Open Online Courses on Coursera. Some are new courses, launching soon. Enrollments for representative 91探花courses on Coursera are listed below. Numbers reflect the top instance for each individual course to date, since some courses are repeated multiple times throughout the year:
- Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics: 30,578
- Information and Risk Management: 25,077
- *Introduction to Public Speaking: 15,929 (*growing daily; course starts June 24, 2013)
- Computational Methods for Data Analysis: 15,179
- High Performing Scientific Computing: 14,977
- Scientific Computing: 13,374
- Building an Information Risk Management Toolkit: 10,533
- Designing and Executing Information Security Strategies: 9,206
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