Category: Top News

EdX has finally released its app for iPhone, although no announcement has been made so far.

This app, available for free in the iTunes store, is a clone of the Android version, except for one detail: video speed can be changed in the iOS version.

The available version is 1.0.00. It is downloadable under the name “edx”.

The edX iPhone app works as a companion tool to watch videos, announcements and handouts. But it does not allow users to take courses entirely on their smartphones. In order to complete readings, homework problems, and exams, the user is redirected to the website. The same applies to forum discussions and assignments, which must be completed through computers or tablets.

Right now only 79 courses are mobile-friendly. This means that only videos coming from these courses are downloadable. Within these 79 courses, however, many videos cannot be downloaded.

Still, some courses like “Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?”, “Entrepreneurship 102: What can you do for your customer” and “The Science of Happiness” offer a good user experience.

Despite some bugs and crashes, the app is well-built and straightforward.

It is great to be able to download and watch videos without consuming cellular data. Definitely, a must-have app for edx-ers.

This scholarship challenge aimed at middle school students (7th grade) is a great idea.

Students who complete one of five edX courses designed for advanced high school or college-level students will become finalists in Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s prestigious Young Scholars Program, aimed at high-performing middle school students with financial need.

The courses, with start dates ranging from January 20 to February 10, include:

• Jazz Appreciation, from UT AustinX (Jan. 20)
• Frankenstein, from UC BerkeleyX (Feb. 2)
• Programming in Scratch, from HarveyMuddX (Feb. 2)
• Introduction to Environmental Science, from DartmouthX (Feb. 3)
• Super-Earths and Life, from HarvardX (Feb. 10)

The foundation usually receives 1,000-2,000 applications for the program each year; about 500 typically qualify as semifinalists.

• edX page explaining how to apply.
• Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s program.

Steven B. Klinsky, 58 a New York professional investor who founded the private equity firm New Mountain Capital, is proposing a way for high school students to take one year of college online for free.

To carry out his vision, he has donated $1 million to edX –the MIT and Harvard University overseen online venture– and has formed a nonprofit group group, the Modern States Education Alliance.

His idea, announced last week through the Washington Post, is to have 20 new edX courses, in addition to an existing 10, that would prepare students to pass Advanced Placement (AP) or College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests so they can be able to take freshman year for free and start in college as sophomores.

Mr. Kinsky’s “Freshman Year for Free” initiative occurs while President Obama is proposing that community college should be free.

By using this funding, edX will add these additional courses to its current suite of AP and introductory college-level courses currently offered on its platform.

• “These additional courses will ensure that every major subject covered by a College Board Advanced Placement* or CLEP* exam will be offered on edX.org. Students completing the courses will have an opportunity to pass exams and gain credit from traditional colleges and universities. All courses are planned to launch and be open for registration on edX.org within the next 18 months,” edX explains.
• “These courses will cover important freshman college subjects, ranging from math, science and history courses, to economics, anthropology, philosophy, foreign languages, and English.”
• “Each course will be developed by edX university partners, and will include quizzes, tests, assessments, online discussion groups and other features.  Texts and materials will also be provided to students free of charge, online.”

For decades, many colleges have offered credit to students for high scores on AP tests. Credits are also available through the College-Level Examination Program, known as CLEP.

Modern States intends to add tutoring, counseling, mentoring and college guidance to its portal over time, and to continuously update and expand the course offerings.

“No one should be shut out of education after high school because of tuition cost or lack of access,” said Steven Klinsky, Modern States’ founder and chairman.  “Modern States’ goal is to create at least one universally available and tuition free path toward high quality education for anyone who seeks it.

Another initiative to make college free came from Shai Reshef, founder of University of the People. His TED talk last summer has been viewed by more than a million people.

Simon & Schuster will sell online courses taught by popular authors specialized on health, finance and self-help. Pricing will range from $25 to $85. The company will share revenues from the courses with authors.

Courses will be available on the authors’ websites and on the company’s new site, SimonSays.com, and will include workbooks, videos by entertainers and experts and access to live question-and-answer sessions.

Initially, there will be three authors with established, dedicated fan bases: Dr. David B. Agus, the best-selling author of “The End of Illness” (this is the course on his site); Zhena Muzyka, who wrote the self-help book “Life by the Cup” (course page); and Tosha Silver, the author of the spiritual advice book “Outrageous Openness” (course page). The publishing company will release 12 to 15 courses this year. These are the first ones:

The NYT reports about this initiative.

The first U.S. Open edX meetup will take place in New York on Thursday, January 22, 2015.

IBL Studios Education, along with McKinsey Academy and Johnson and Johnson, is organizing the event.

Six speakers representing the most active organizations in Open edX in the New York area will share their insights.

McKinsey Academy is the sponsor venue.

Sessions will be filmed by IBL and shared online with the whole edX community.

Access is free, although the number of seats is limited. Top academics from several colleges in New York, including NYU, Cooper Union and Columbia, will attend the event.

To join, just RSVP to this Open edX meetup.

This is the list of presenters:

• Vishal Gandhi – McKinsey Academy
  “Hyperextending edX”
• Tim Mauri – Johnson and Johnson (J&J)
  “How J&J decided on edX”
• Ruben Savizky, PhD – Cooper Union
  “Lessons learned from creating a MOOC on edx.org”
• Michael Amigot – IBL Studios Education
  “Digital badges and other innovative features”
• Yoav Bergner, PhD – Educational Testing Service
  “Collaborative assessment research with Open edX”
• Bruno Kavanagh – Interactive media consultant, McKinsey Academy
  “Instructional design is dead: Long live learning media!”

Did MOOCs undermined or even replaced the traditional college education?

On the contrary: they have offered an effective way to close the skills gap.

Daphne Koller, cofounder and president of Coursera, shares her view in the MIT Technology Review magazine:

• Only 15 percent of Coursera’s learners [this company has 10 million enrolled students] are college age. The other 85 percent are adults looking to expand their horizons and working adults working to build critical jobs skills for a better career. Many the skills they seek –data science, mobile apps, digital marketing– didn’t event exist a decade ago.

•  To complete a MOOC is a measure that brings tangible benefits, including new jobs, new responsibilities, and promotions.

• A four-year degree is no longer sufficient for a lifelong career. MOOCs can be an important component to better suit the learning needs of the 21st century.

Our friend Dhawal Shah, founder of Class-Central.com, has written a detailed analyses about MOOC growth in 2014. Dhawal concludes that “the number of universities offering MOOCs has doubled to cross 400 universities, with a doubling of the number of cumulative courses offered, to 2400.” “22 of the top 25 US universities in US News World Report rankings are now offering courses online for free.”

What is interesting, too, is that Open edX has been the preferred platform to host MOOCs.

This is what the article says:

“Institutions choose Open edX for DIY: Open edX quickly seems to have become the de facto platform for organizations and groups who are looking to host their own MOOCs. It has been adopted by several organizations in diverse regions of the world, including Jordan, Japan,France, China, India and the US.”

(By Michael Amigot)

No doubt, a revolution is happening is higher education thanks to the edX technology and pedagogy.

I recently attended a conference in Madrid, Spain, by Eric Grimson, former MIT Chancellor and one of edX’s top pedagogy experts in the world –he has created three successful MOOCs on edX.

He explained how a 2,000 year-old industry is being disrupted today. There have been two major disruptions: the printing press in 1568 and the blackboard in 1801. And we are living the third one: the one that comes from digital tools and particularly from edX.

The conference is magnificent to understand why the edX technology is so unique.

Professor Andrés Pedreño, a leading pedagogist and entrepreneur in Spain, followed Grimson’s speech with a keynote address worth watching.

All is in this video.

Welcome to the MOOC 2.0 age.

MOOCs created a market for free online courses. The MOOC 2.0 concept arrives to make courses more engaging, interactive and personalized. Now that there is more data and analysis, instructors are researching best practices in teaching and learning. In addition, there are several studies on how student interaction promotes learning and retention.

The Open edX platform has been fully translated into Spanish (Spain).

A team of three universities from Spain –Carlos III, Autónoma de Madrid and Politécnica de Valencia, which are members of the edX Consortium– along with the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation (FGSR) and IBL Studios Education, completed the translation in December. In total, 4888 strings were translated.

The project has been conducted through the collaborative platform Transifex.com.

The Open edX platform is, so far, 100 percent translated into five languages: Spanish (from Spain), English (from the United States), Arabic, Russian and Lithuanian.

In addition to the translation of the Open edX platform, the three mentioned Spanish universities, FGSR and IBL Studios Education have tackled the translation of most of the edx.org website, specially the part regarding the certificates.

Perfectly translated certificates from edx.org will foster enrollments from Spanish-speaking students in the U.S., Latin America and Spain.

These three universities will launch several courses in Spanish on February of 2015. The GSR Foundation will also launch an enhanced Open edX platform (lectylab.com) with paid and open courses, intended for professionals focused on reading and literacy. This platform has been developed by IBL.

The GSR Foundation is a recognized non profit organization devoted to reading promotion as well as the Spanish language.