Pearson’s enterprise learning platform in India will include edX.org course programs. More specifically, Pearson Professional Programs will bundle edX courses and add instructor support, career progression services. Currently, Pearson includes new manager entry point training, programmes in the domain of business and management, new age skills, and custom learning for senior leaders.

This initiative is the result of a partnership between edX.org and Pearson. The programs offered include MicroMasters and professional certification:

1-    Supply Chain management –  MIT
2-    Business Analytics – Columbia University
3-    Artificial intelligence – Columbia University
4-    Data Science – UC San Diego
5-    Robotics    University of Pennsylvania
6-    International Business – Thunderbird School of Management
7-    Digital Product Management Boston University
8-    Digital Marketing – Wharton

“This partnership with Pearson will offer Indian learners a blended learning experience of online courses on the EdX platform with personalized instructor support and career progression assistance,” Amit Goyal, India head at edX said.

Life-long learning is bound to be part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will force a business model change in all industries resulting in new categories of jobs, displacing others, says a report published by the World Economic Forum.

The skill set required will change the landscape of education and training. The report suggests that “65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.”

Nearly 50 % of subject knowledge acquired during the first year of a four-year technical degree outdated by the time students graduate, according to the World Economic Forum. Even people in STEM positions can expect to enter their professionals only partially prepared for what they will face on the job.

In order to manage these trends, the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests that reskilling and upskilling talent across industries will be imperative over the coming decades. eLearning in all its forms from MOOCs to micro degrees to online coding boot camp programs holds the potential to growing need for continuing education across the career cycle.

This way the eLearning and the entire ed-tech sector is well positioned to experience substantial and even unprecedented growth.

• Read the full WEF report

EdX will continue its push on MicroMasters and professional education in 2018 after a successful year in 2017.

Last year, edX doubled down on the MicroMasters (with one MIT program bringing in $4 million in revenue) and launched a new credential known as a professional certificate.

These are some of the conclusions from a detailed report written by Dhawal Shah at Class Central.com

• EdX currently has 14 million learners, up 10 million learners in 2016. These learners accounted for more than 50 million course enrollments, 16 million of which came about in 2017.
• edX has approximately 1,800 courses, 500 of which were added in 2017. A good chunk of these courses came from Microsoft, who now offers over 200 courses as well as 10 Professional Certificate and 8 Xseries programs.
• MicroMasters range in price from $540 to $1,500, with the median price being $946.

Class Central reports also about the most popular edX courses and provides other interesting highlights.

The $150 billion eLearning market will grow at a rate of over 5 percent annually between 2017 to 2024, according to a report by Global Market Insights. This way the valuation will hit a valuation of $200 billion by 2024.

These are the five reasons why eLearning will continue to grow:

• The number of students who prefer a blended learning environment has increased while the number of students preferring a face-to-face only learning environment has continued to decline.
• A majority of faculty will experiment with online learning over the coming years.
• Learning management systems, especially those built around strong data analytics, will continue to be embraced by administrators. LMSs are becoming the eyes of higher ed institutions for vital data.
• Many nations in the developing world are now looking to eLearning as a solution to the limited access to higher education. Global markets are therefore expanding.
• Tech companies are increasingly interested in partnerships with higher ed institutions and are accordingly moving into the education business.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined the edX Consortium and decided to offer the AWS Developer Professional Series courses.

These self-paced, free series are intended to provide developers with the skills to create AWS cloud-based applications using the AWS SDK and Python programming language.

• AWS Developer: Building on AWS
  • Introduction to AWS services and the AWS development SDKs.

• AWS Developer: Deploying on AWS
  • Concepts and practices behind DevOps methodology.

• AWS Developer: Optimizing on AWS
  • Performance tuning of the application developed in courses one and two.

Piotr Mitros, the father of the Open edX platform, is now working on a new MOOC platform.

He left the edX organization six months ago, although the departure was not announced.

DECEMBER 2017  –  NEWSLETTER #4

• Oracle will open in early January a $43 million building that will house an innovative, free public high school with 550 students, the sleek Design Tech High School, known as d.teach. “Nobody has done anything like this before,” said Colleen Cassity, the executive director of the Oracle Education Foundation.

• Cengage Learning has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement and announced OpenNow, a suite of digital products for general education courses. Fees start at $25 per student per course, a price point in line with Lumen Learning, which has also developed proprietary OER courseware. Available courses now include psychology, American government and sociology.

• Most higher education CIOs say their organizations’ business models will change as a result of the digital transformation. Top tech areas for new spending will include cybersecurity, ERP, Analytics, ERP, CRM, LMS, digital marketing and cloud services.

• Saint Michael’s College, a private institution in Vermont, has created new “pop-up”, short-term courses about timely issues not accommodated in the traditional curriculum and offered for 0-1 credits, pass or fail. Other institutions are implementing the pop-up approach, including Bennington College (VT) and Stanford University (CA).

• Cornell Tech, a graduate school at Cornell University, inaugurated the Tata Innovation Center, after this IT services firm contributed $50 million to help the school invest in technology research and expand K-12 digital literacy programs in New York City.

• Noodle Partners, one of the newer players to step into the online program manager (OPM) space, got a boost attracting $14 million in funding. Its CEO John Katzman started 2U, one of the companies, along with Academic Partnerships, Bisk, Pearson Embanet and Wiley Education Services that today control half of the OPM market, which is estimated at around $1.1 billion. Noodle Partners has signed on nearly a dozen universities like American, Tulane and New York University.

• Forbes has made a list of young entrepreneurs with its list of 2018 “30 Under 30”. There is a lot of innovation on what they are doing.

• VitalSource, dedicated to offering tools to create digital courses and materials, has acquired the corporate LMS Intrepid Learning, which claims to serve 20 million users globally.

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Archive:
The Learning Times Newsletter #3 – November 2017
The Learning Times Newsletter #2 – October 2017
The Learning Times Newsletter #1 – September 2017

Schools will start looking at open online courses, such as the edX’s MicroMasters, to improve recruitment and admissions for specialized master’s programs, writes Dr. Joshua Kim, director of digital learning at Dartmouth, at his column in Inside Higher Education.

Today schools spend an enormous amount of money on Google AdWords to develop qualified applicants. “Wouldn’t it be better to use these marketing dollars to create open online courses that all lifelong learners could participate?  This seems to be much more aligned with the mission of higher education than giving more money to Google,” states Mr. Kim.

Additionally, these programs improve the quality of residential and online Master’s degrees, as well as students’ performance.

The most remarkable example is the MIT’s Supply Chain Management degree, with 200K enrollees, 9K completions earning a certificate and 622 passing the 5 courses. Of those who finished the MicroMasters, MIT was accepted 40 of these applicants.

edX.org has elaborated a list of the top 17 courses in 2017. This list comes after collecting the feedback of learners and staff at edX, and it considers also which are the top “hot skills” needed to land an in-demand job.

The learners’ picks are mostly related to test preparation:

• TOEFL Test Preparation, from ETSx.
• IELTS Academic Test Preparation, from The University of Queensland
• Essential Statistics for Data Analysis using Excel, from Microsoft
• Basic Spanish 1: Getting Starter, from UP Valencia
• The Science of Happiness, from Berkeley
• English Composition, from Arizona State University

edX’s staff’s courses are mostly introductory:

• The Architectural Imagination, from Harvard University.
• HTML5 and CSS Fundamentals, from W3Cx
• Introduction to Linux, from the Linux Foundation
• Introduction to Project Management, from AdelaideX
• Introduction to Java Programming – Part 1, from KHUSTx
• Communication Skills for Bridging Divides, from CatalystX

In terms of hot skills required by employers, these are the selected courses:

• Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python, from MITx
• Artificial Intelligence (AI), from Columbia University
• Cybersecurity Fundamentals, from RIT
• Machine Learning, from Columbia University
• Robotics Fundamentals, from Penn University

edX partners joined in Whistler, British Columbia in the annual Global Forum event on December 5 and 6. The event, hosted by the University of British Columbia (UBC), allowed partners to exchange ideas and views on education.

One the conference’s main topics was innovative pathways to credit and credentialing after the MOOCs have mostly faded off because of the lack of profitability.

During this 2017 event, three business challenges were highlighted:

• Create a true community of learners on a sticky platform that learns continuously over a period of at least 5 years, develop a portfolio of credentials, and demonstrate their achievements
• Establish valued, relevant credentials for lifelong learning
• Partner with companies for interviews, employment, upskilling, and content.

In terms of technology, attendants shared the goal of setting the bar on high-quality and engaging education:

• Leverage fully the power of digital technology for learning
  – AI-powered personalized learning (e.g., HarvardX Super-Earths, Quant Methods course)
  – Leverage the engagement of VR and AR
  – Harness the power of networks, e.g., crowdsource hinting
• Unleash the power of cognitive science, e.g. retrieval learning
• Deploy deep analytics for learner engagement and platform stickiness

As main goals, Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, remarked the following:

• Triple our goal reach to 100M, continue Open edX commitment, support national platforms
• Further internationalization and launch more language platforms
• Ensure diverse offerings and new credentials at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels in more in-demand fields

Ju-Ho Lee, Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management and former Minister of Education, Science, and Technology, Korea, delivered the welcoming keynote.

Professors Andrew Howells and Bernadette Drabsch, from the University of Newcastle, were recognized as winners of the 2017 edX Prize, because of their contribution in online teaching and learning and commitment to the open education. Their course, Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101, captured a unique and creative look at natural history.

“This course shows how it is possible to successfully bridge science and art theory, delivering innovative, online methods that break down the illustration components and theory of drawing into accessible techniques, so that learners can truly gain the skills they need to see and draw nature like a professional illustrator,” praised Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX. [This course will re-open on April 4, 2018.]

The 2017 event recognized also other professors who were finalists.