In 2011 Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, both teaching at the time the same course at Stanford University, offered an open course in Artificial Intelligence using a platform developed by two fellow Stanford professors. That AI course attracted 160,000 registrants and launched the hullabaloo about massive online courses, open to anyone, that might have a certificate or credential at the end. In December 2011, MIT announced MITx with it's first course 6.002x in Electronics and Circuits. MITx is to offer MIT-hard courses openly for anyone to take, with the possibility of receiving a certificate. In early 2012, Sebastian Thrun, started his own company Udacity to do essentially the same thing. Also in early 2012, Coursera, by those two Stanford professors that provided the platform used by the AI course and one in Machine Learning, was announced with funding from venture capitalists to commercialize the technology/process (the platform has existed for quite a while). Then MITx begat edX a partnership with Harvard and potentially other universities. The recent news is about the universities that are partnering with Coursera to offer courses, with the possibility of certificates, through the Coursera platform.

To date, the experience has been different between the three platforms, even though they essentially do the same thing. All offer content mostly in video or screencast format. There are different takes on assessments and tests, from well integrated with content to summative at the end of each section. Some assessments are highly involved (6.002x circuits), most are simple multiple choice. Some are more university course-like, others are more like short courses.

As John just pointed out, there's lots that's not known about these efforts.

Brandon

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Fred Riley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I spotted the news story below on the Facebook page of an educator:

UK university joins US online partnership
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18857999

I'd not heard of Coursera before, but I'm sure folk on here have. Do you have any opinions/musings/info that can be shared? The story says that it's a descendant of MITx which has been mentioned on this list.

Cheers

Fred Riley
Learning Technologist
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy, University of Nottingham
Vcard: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nursing/sonet/about/fr_uon.vcf

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