Category: Platforms | Tech

The MIT Open Learning division has put together a summer program intended for high school students interested in STEM courses.

This program includes self-paced, free online courses from MITx on edX, as well as course materials from MIT Open Courseware (or OCW), on biology, calculus, chemistry, computer science and physics.

It corresponds to classes taken by many first-year, on-campus students at MIT, including similar assignments and tests.

“In fact, MIT students can get credit for some of these classes by passing an on-campus exam before the semester begins, and professors who teach these classes on campus recommend these online courses and course materials as good ways to prepare, or brush up, for the exam,” explains MIT.

These are the courses:

Biology:

MITx – 7.00x Introduction to Biology – The Secret of Life
OCW – 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology
OCW – 7.013 Introductory Biology
OCW – 7.016 Introductory Biology

Big Blue Button, the open-source web conferencing system, presented its latest version for the Open edX platform during the 2018 Open edX Conference in Montreal, Canada.

Product Manager Fred Dixon demonstrated what integrated real-time collaboration looked like in OpenedX using Big Blue Button.

This is his talk.

Want to integrate virtual office hours, live classes, and student collaboration into your edX courses? Here’s a video showing BigBlueButton running within openedX. Open source FTW! #openedx2018 https://t.co/jYrwbq74ID

— BigBlueButton (@bigbluebutton) May 29, 2018

Former Florida Governor and Chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, Jeb Bush, reaffirmed in an interview with CNBC with CNBC that college is a valuable investment and primarily suggested the Open edX-based “Freshman Year for Free” program, which is a part of the New York non-profitModern States Education Alliance.[Disclosure: IBL Education developed the CLEP courses along with the Open edX platform.]

This initiative, founded by New Mountain Capital CEO Steve Klinsky and directed by former journalist David Vise, helps learners study for CLEP exams (administered by The College Board) and access college for free.

I don’t always do morning TV, but when I do, I prefer @SquawkCNBC, one of the more civilized members of the fourth estate. @CNBC @modernstatesed @excelined https://t.co/9hSYTxkLpB

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) June 7, 2018

60,000 Registered Users on ModernStates.org

In addition to this appearance on CNBC, Jeb Bush wrote an article with Steve Klinsky on RealClearPolicy.com titled “How Governors Can Give All Students ‘Freshman Year for Free’”. These are some excerpts:

• “If you’re a governor, state education leader or a parent looking at paying the high cost of college, this message is addressed to you.” (…) “For $85 per CLEP exam, far less than the cost of tuition for college credits, governors across the country can enable students to take a CLEP test for free and earn college credit. The fee for the exam is small compared to the $1,782 cost of a typical course at a public university, and can provide a path to higher education for thousands of students who face the choice between not going to college or taking on massive debt.”
• “For perspective, helping 100,000 state residents pass 100,000 course exams would only cost a state $8.5 million — a fraction of a state’s education budget — and probably save the state far more in taxpayer-subsidized alternatives or safety net programs. States could also encourage its use in high schools by including passage of Advanced Placement or CLEP exams in their high school accountability systems and providing financial incentives to school districts when students earn college credit through these and other college credit options.”
• “Modern States has gained more than 60,000 registered users since it launched in August 2017, and its student passing rate on CLEP exams has well exceeded the 70 percent national average. High schoolers, working parents, military personnel, and Dreamers, to name a few, are all benefitting from this innovation.”

Microsoft has become the largest private publisher of courses on edX.org, with 180+ courses and 2.6 million learners; all of it within a period of three years.

Courses include a program in AI, and are mostly oriented toward professional development. This effort fits with Microsoft’s educational mission of democratizing learning and bringing it to the masses. From a business perspective, its main goal is to promote Azure cloud services.

163 OPEN EDX SITES HOSTED ON AZURE

Microsoft, who joined the edX consortium in 2015, claims that 10 % of the Open edX-based instances – namely, 163 – are hosted on Azure. One of its main instances is Global Knowledge, who partnered in 2017 with IBL Education to deploy its ecosystem. By the end of this year, the software corporation expects to reach 200 instances on Azure.

Additionally, the Redmond-based giant launched in April 2017 a “Learning as a Service (LaaS)” partnering program, which was introduced by three Microsoft managers during the recent 2018 Open edX conference in Montreal. This initiative is mainly based on providing partners (100 so far) with free course content, which they use to enhance their private instances.

• LaaS Program for Open edX