The TOEFL Test Preparation MOOC will launch its third round this January 25, 2017. Registration is open.

So far this course, one of the most popular on the edX.org platform, has attracted thousand of students worldwide.

However, a number of students have expressed negative opinions regarding the course’s “poor and inadequate content”.

David C, a student who has completed the course, has given it a 2.5 star rating on edX, saying, “The amount of practice questions is very little, and most of them are the same that you can get as ‘free content’ on the ETS website, therefore, they are not providing anything new. In the discussion threads, the instructors mostly used ‘copy-paste’ bits of text to answer to our questions – sometimes up to the point that the answer received wasn’t related to the question asked.”

“Students who completed the course have used other platforms too to prepare for the test.”

Another critique is based on the way ETS handles its Twitter community. Students are asked to join the community and this is used a promotional campaign as the same tweets appear from multiple profiles.

 

Microsoft’s training division has launched several MOOCs on Azure through its new Open edX platform, openedx.microsoft.com.

These courses, all of them open to enrollment, are the following:

• Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
• Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks
• Microsoft Azure identity
• Microsoft Azure Storage
• Azure Fundamentals
• Microsoft Azure for AWS Experts
• Automating Azure Workloads
• Managing Azure Workloads
• Microsoft Azure App Service
• Databases in Azure
• Azure Security and Compliance
• DevOps on Azure PaaS
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

These courses are mostly text-based, with poor quality videos and no transcripts on them, and have almost no interactivity. Technical support to students is provided exclusively through Microsoft’s forum system. Even Open edX’s forum feature has been deactivated. This Open edX platform, which is running on Azure, is used as a repository of content, with no intention to create a community of users.

This graphic above shows how EMC uses EdCast’s Open edX platform to train their customers and partners. Additionally, EMC uses EdCast’s Knowledge Network to publish micro-learning and try to engage their customers.

Over 23 million students signed up for at least one MOOC in 2016, triggering the total number of learners to 58 million, according to data provided by Class Central. Additionally, 2,600 new courses were announced in 2016 (up from 1,800 last year), taking the total number of MOOCs to 6,850 from over 700 universities –disclosed Dhawal Shah, founder and CEO of Class Central, on an article in EdSurge.

Since the first massive course was offered by Stanford professors in late 2011, MOOC providers have raised over $400 million in capital and now employ more than a thousand staff.

The “Big Three” MOOC providers — Coursera, Udacity, edX—combined potentially made around $100 million in revenues in 2016, according to the same source.

The edX.org educational portal celebrated its fourth anniversary in 2016 by adding over 500 courses and launching 19 MicroMasters programs from 14 international universities. Four million new learners enrolled in the edX courses throughout 2016.

This graphic below reflects the advancements.

 

The University of Queensland (UQ), a prominent edX university, has partnered with the giant Chinese Open edX platform XuetangX to offer five MOOCs in Chinese. These courses have attracted more than 65,000 learners. UQ’s popular The Science of Everyday Thinking had more than 50,000 registered users.

The partnership with XuetangX, which holds more than 1000 courses and six million users, has provided UQ with “a valuable opportunity to raise its profile among Chinese learners”, said this Australian university.

Professor at George Washington University and creator of the lauded Open edX MOOC Numerical Methods Lorena Barba, has been awarded with one of ten 2016 Berkeley’s Learner-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science.

Dr. Barba, a leading advocate of the Open edX technology, received the award for “her work developing and delivering curriculum focused on transparency in science and education, as well as for her clear dedication to and advocacy of open science and reproducibility.”

The award, which includes $10,000, was presented during the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) Annual Meting, on December 15.

• Winners of the 2016 Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science

 

These are the ten most popular courses of 2016 at edX.org. The list, elaborated by the edX team, is based on total enrollments and learner ratings.
1. Introduction to Computer Science – HarvardX (Self-Paced)

“Just incredible, can’t speak highly enough about this course and do not believe that there could be any better introductory course on CS.” – Philip

2. Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Excel – Microsoft (Self-Paced)

“I’ve learnt a lot and I’ll be able to apply almost everything immediately… It will be very useful for our company and for our clients.” – Jordina

3. TOEFL® Test Preparation: The Insider’s Guide – ETSx

“Amazing course, great instructors always there to answer the main concerns. Highly recommended if you want to take the TOEFL Test.” – Anonymous

(Starts January 25)

4. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python – MITx 

“Excellent! This course is a must-take. It is a very comprehensive and great course in Python as well as computer science.” – Yew

(Starts January 10)

5. The Science of Everyday Thinking – UQx (Self-Paced)

“As a psychologist I was thrilled not only by amount and quality of material, but also by the interviews with top psychologists of the world. The guys interviewed Richard Nisbett, Elizabeth Loftus, “MythBusters”, even Nobel prize winner Daniel Kanneman. Incredible job! Fantastic course and great experience for everybody.” – Dmytro
6. Introduction to Java Programming – Part 1 – HKUSTx (Self-Paced)

“Great introductory Java course. TC Pong does a great job of explaining the content. Most of the content applies not only to Java, but to programming and problem solving in general” – Anonymous

7. Introduction to Linux – LinuxFoundationX (Self-Paced)

“This is my first online course and it could not get better than this. I wish I had known of this course earlier. The content and mode of instruction is just superb.” – Ouya

8. Introduction to Project Management – AdelaideX (Self-Paced)

“Every phase of project management was explained in detail. I do recommend this course to enhance professional and personal skills!” – Joana

9. Conversational English Skills – TsinghuaX (Self-Paced)

“Fun course! For those who are not very proficient in English, it will definitely help. You get to learn a lot about different cultures as well!” – Bharat

10. The Science of Happiness – UC BerkeleyX (Self-Paced) 

“This was an incredible experience. I am in tears. I think there are many things to highlight about this course that would not be fair if I name any of it. People have to work hard but the reward of this will change your life for good. I assure you. Thanks a lot.” – Oscar

(Starts January 3)

 

 

The next release of the Open edX platform, Ficus, is almost here.

For now, the edX engineering team has launched a pre-release, alpha version available just for testing but not for production purposes.

“We will have a real release candidate available soon, once we’ve worked out how to support course-discovery as a Docker container along with the rest of the installation,” said Ned Batchelder, an edX engineer in charge of the release. “We wanted to get these infrastructure changes into your hands as soon as possible so the eventual installation will be as smooth as possible.”

The “Ficus” version contains significant infrastructure changes, such as:

The New York-based non-profit organization Modern States Education Alliance extended until December 2016 the possibility to earn free college credit without even paying the $100 of test and scheduling fees of taking the College Board’s CLEP exam. This is part of the Pilot Program of the “Freshman Year for Free” initiative, which is based on creating a public library of high-quality CLEP and AP courses.

These courses, produced by edX university partners and IBL Open edX and taught by top professors from around the country, are open to anyone through edX.org, Modern States’ website and Open edX learning platform. The program is explained in detailed on the “Passing the CLEP and Learning with Modern States” orientation course.

The Founder and CEO of Modern States, Steve Klinsky, said on an article written in RealClearPolitics.com that “as President-elect Trump reviews policy ideas to help poor and working class citizens and to ‘make America great again’, there is one education idea that is both exceptionally simple to implement and exceptionally valuable: namely, create a national digital public library of online college courses, available to everyone on a tuition free basis.”