Category: Top News

After comparing the quality of more than 80 MOOC platforms, Mooclab has put Open edX at the top of the list. User sentiment and feedback have been the main criteria.

This is the official release made by MoocLab on January 25, 2016.

Online Learning Community Website, MoocLab, today released the 2016 Best Online Course Providers to help the millions of students interested in online education compare the quality of more than 80 platforms offering both academic and skill-based online courses. EdX comes top of the list of MOOC Platforms. Khan Academy is ranked #1 of the Free & Low-Cost online course Providers, and the Open University’s OpenLearn, comes first of the Open Courseware Provider list. For those interested in learning to code, TheCodePlayer website tops the free online coding course providers, and Treehouse is ranked the best provider of low-cost online coding courses. Flatiron School’s Learn-Verified Web Developer program comes in first place among the online coding bootcamp providers.

Online learning is gaining momentum globally because of its flexibility, low cost, easy accessibility, increased effectiveness of education technology and the growth in number of internet users. According to recent research, the global MOOC market is set to grow at a CAGR of over 46% from 2015 to 2019, and data collected by MOOC aggregator site Class Central revealed that 35 million people enrolled in online courses in the last four years with 2015 enrollments doubling from 2014.

MoocLab’s League Tables rank online course providers according to criteria that take into account a number of factors relating to the type of offering, such as the number of courses on offer, the quality of the instruction and content, the standing of partner institutions, assessment, accreditation, practicality, social tools and interface usability.

The interactive League Tables can be used by students and lifelong learners to explore factors which are of importance to them and be guided in choosing the appropriate online course platform(s) based on the different measures of importance.

The rankings are based on information obtained from the different platforms and/or user sentiment and feedback sourced from student course reviews, public discussion boards, blogs etc

Read more about the methodology here.

MoocLab’s League Tables have been categorised into the following provider groups:

• MOOC Platforms
• Free and low-cost Online Course Providers
• Open Courseware Providers
• Online Coding Course Providers
• Online Coding Bootcamps

Each League Table is accompanied by an interactive Comparison Table providing key information relating to each platform allowing users to make informed choices based on their own measures of importance. Each provider listed in the League Tables also links to a more detailed review of the provider hosted in the MoocLab Reviews section.

The publication of the League Tables is hosted on the MoocLab website: http://www.mooclab.club/categories/league-tables.169/

MoocLab‘s 2016 Top 3 Online Course Providers by category 

For the full list of rankings, visit MoocLab’s League Tables Page: http://www.mooclab.club/categories/league-tables.169/

MOOC Platforms

1. edX
2. Coursera
3. Udacity

Free & Low-Cost Online Course Providers

1. Khan Academy
2. TED.com
3. StraighterLine

Open Courseware Providers

1. OpenLearn
2. UC Irvine OpenCourseWare
3. JHSPHOPENcourseware

Online Coding Course Providers

Free 

1. The CodePlayer
2. Codecademy
3. Code.org

Low-cost 

1. Treehouse
2. Udacity
3. Code Avengers

Online Coding Bootcamps

1. Learn-Verified Web Developer program
2. The Hack Reactor Remote Beta
3. Ronin (Makers Academy)
4. CareerFoundry

About MoocLab 

MoocLab.club is a community site at the heart of connecting people to online learning via forums, free guides, information & independent reviews for e-Learning enthusiasts. The site aims to provide a centralised resource for people to interact around online learning, obtain information and guidance as well as news and insights on MOOCs and e-learning.

 

All of the talks of the third Open edX meetup celebrated on January 7th in New York have been posted on IBL’s YouTube Channel.

IBL has published all of those videos, along with the PowerPoint presentations, in an edX-style course on its new site, IBLCampus.com.

Speakers were:

• Maurice Matiz, Director, Media & Instructional Design Studio, Columbia Center for Teaching & Learning, Columbia University

• Joel Barciauskas, Engineering Manager at edX

• Lorena A. Barba, Professor at George Washington University and Chair of Open edX Universities Symposium

• Paul Schiff Berman, Vice Provost for Online Education and Academic Innovation, George Washington University

• Jennifer Gormley, Senior Director, Product and Marketing at McKinsey Academy

• Michael Amigot, Founder at IBL Studios (Open edX)

• Ivan Shumkov, Founder at Open Online Academy (ooac.org)

 

IBL CAMPUS OPEN EDX PLATFORM AND APP

IBL Campus is also the name of a new iOS app, which allows to watch videos and course content online and offline. This is the first fully-featured Open edX-based app available.

This means, for example, that all of the video content of the last Open edX meetup is available on the app. The only requirement to access it is to enroll in that course at IBL Campus.com.

IBL Campus App has been considered as one of the best educational apps by the Best iOS Appz review-specialist website.

 

Dogwood, the latest Open edX version, will be released this coming week, according to edX.

Dogwood RC3 has been available since January 22. Since then edX engineers have been mostly working on migration scripts.

Dogwood’s new features include XBlocks such as Oppia, Office Mix and LTI.

This LTI XBlock will replace the existing LTI XModule and will offer course teams the ability to configure the way LTI components open when learners use them: in a modal window, in a separate web browser window, or embedded in a course page.

Another interesting feature is Partial Credit. In Studio, course teams will be able to configure four problem types (checkbox, multiple choice, numerical input and write-your-own-grader) so learners can receive partial credit for a problem if they submit an answer that is partly correct.

The edX Release Notes contain a summary of changes that are deployed. Those changes are part of the master branch of the edX platform in GitHub.

A major characteristic of this Dogwood version was the upgrade from Django 1.4 to Django 1.8.7.

The solution to improve learning outcomes is mostly based on launching open software ecosystems. And Open edX is a step in that direction.

Stephen Laster, Chief Digital Officer at McGraw-Hill Education, has written a revealing analysis on EdSurge, highlighting the idea that technologies that live within closed systems create roadblocks in students’ learning pathways.

“Building digital content and learning technology around open standards ensures that educators and students can determine what’s most effective without worrying about whether different technologies will work together,” he states.

“The simple solution to accelerate open edtech for everyone is to support technology standards set forth by organizations like the IMS Global Learning Consortium.” 

 

 

 

These are Educause’s top 10 IT technologies of 2016 to focus on:

1. Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning
2. Software as a Service (SaaS)
3. Administrative or business performance analytics
4. App development (responsive design, hybrid, etc.)
5. Accessing online components of blended/hybrid courses from mobile devices
6. Mobile apps for enterprise applications
7. Service desk tool and management strategy
8. Learning analytics
9. Data collection and sophisticated analytics methodologies for information security
10. Application performance monitoring.

Educause Review: Top 10 IT Issues, 2016: Divest, Reinvest, and Differentiate

An interesting initiative from edX and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation –the “Cooke edX Challenge”– to help qualified 7th grade students. They enroll in selected edX courses and successfully complete one of five. Up to 70 eligible students will receive many benefits, such as individualized counseling and funding for educational programs, through the Young Scholars Program.

These are the seven courses:

• Tsunamis and Storm Surges: Introduction to Coastal Disaster – Waseda University
• The Art of Structural Engineering: Bridges – Princeton University
• Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python – MIT 
• Solving Public Policy Problems: UC Berkeley’s Eightfold Path – Berkeley
• Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe – Australian National University

The third Open edX developers’ conference, called Open edX Con, will take place at Stanford University on June 14th and 15th.

Registration is now open, as well as the call for proposals.

The conference will be followed by a hackathon, June 16th and 17th.

edX made this announcement today. “Stanford has been a supporter of the Open edX initiative since day zero. The Stanford team was instrumental in the open-source release of the edX platform, and continues to contribute their code, effort, and enthusiasm to the project,” said edX.

Tickets will cost $200 to $450.

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Open edX: Open edX Con 2016 Call for Proposals

Columbia University’s Center for Teaching & Learning’s Director, Maurice Matiz, explained during the third Open edX Meetup in New York, on January 7, why MOOCs are worth it. These are the reasons:

• Showcase our faculty and our programs
• Attract applicants to our on-campus, distance education, and certificate programs
• Improve how we teach on campus
   – Leverage technological/pedagogical advances for our resident students and tuition-paying students in distance and hybrid education programs
   – Publish excellence
   – Teach the world; share knowledge freely
• Foster lifelong learning programs for alumni
• Fundraising opportunities

Currently, Columbia University, which posts MOOCs on edX.org (seven published courses and five more in production) and Coursera (11 courses) has a dedicated team of over thirty people. All of the MOOCs are released as open content under the Creative Commons license.

Download Maurice Matiz’s presentation

The third Open edX Conference for developers will take place in June in the Bay Area.

Joel Barciauskas, engineering manager at Open edX, made this announcement during the third Open edX Meetup in New York. Further details will be communicated throughout the following weeks.

DOGWOOD BY THE END OF JANUARY

During the event, organized by IBL and McKinsey Academy and rated with five stars on meetup.com, Joel Barciauskas also announced that Open edX’s Dogwood version will be released by the end of January.

Dogwood will have as supported components the edx-platform, including its dependencies, Ora2 and Forums. The picture above, which is part of Joel’s presentation, reflects what’s new in Dogwood.

In addition, Dogwood will include these three components, which won’t be officially supported by edX:

• eCommerce (Otto)
• Insights Analytics
• Mobile applications (iOS and Android)

After Dogwood, the next release will be Eucalyptus, scheduled for March/April.

> Joel Barciauskas’ Open edX Presentation (.pdf)
> Third Open edX’s Meetup: photos, comments and video (streaming quality)

EdX Inc., the not-for-profit venture that runs edX.org, the xConsortium and the Open edX community, has started to rebuild its team and thereby posted a listing of new jobs after some key developers and managers  left the organization.

“EdX commitment to the open source community is not changing, and we have posted a listing on our careers page for Developer Advocates“, said Joel Barciauskas, engineering manager at Open edX.

In addition, a position of Open edX Community Marketing Manager has been added. This person will help to promote the platform and related events, growing both the developer community as well as overall adoption.

The Open edX team at edX Inc. is now formed by Joel Barciauskas, Molly DeBlank and Ned Batchelder, after Sarina Canelake and David “DB” Baumgold decided to pursue other opportunities.

Currently, edX Inc., a well-funded organization created by MIT and Harvard, has 26 open positions, including a VP of Product who will be a member of the executive leadership team and report directly the President and COO. Over 140 people work today at edX’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.