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Kind of ironic, but "old tech" using new tech to promote sales of old tech. Basically Elsevier is giving students in an edX course a free, static version of one of its textbooks. Students then see a link to purchase a discounted, dynamic version--and it seemed to bump up sales! Also interesting is that edX gets a cut of the book sales--maybe another avenue for them to become sustainable, in addition to charging for certification.

Similar to the article below from Daniel, this article talks about how edX is making progress on the certification of students and final exams.

"Considering the biggest complaints about online education have fallen under the three Cs - completion, certification and cheating - edX appears to be covering all of their bases."

The University of Texas system just decided to join the edX movement, with a $5 million dollar contribution. Gov. Rick Perry is trying to cap costs for a college education in Texas, so he approves of the measure...UT also seems closer than other schools to allowing students to get actual credit for the courses, as the article mentions they are considering tiered payments for classes.

Gates funds edX to bring their courses/content to the community college setting. Is K-12 next?

Interesting point Harvey - thanks for weighing in! Per Clay Christensen, disruptive innovators often target the least desirable/most under-served segment of the market upon entry - the business that the established folks don't bother to pursue (think Southwest Airlines, etc). They then evolve up the value chain, ultimately displacing the large, established guys.

Chip, that's what makes this especially curious: it's the major players (Harvard, MIT, etc.) who are pursuing the least-served part of the market here - Christensen would argue that they are more like to pursue sustaining, not disruptive innovation! In essence, EdX is seeking to disrupt the teaching of entry-level, profit-generating classes at other schools, while possibly undermining their own teaching of the same topics. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

MIT considering its future vis-a-vis edX: "An education from MIT may soon involve a freshman year spent completing online courses, two years on campus and a fourth "year" of continuous education. While students pursue their careers, they could access a growing library of online courses to refresh their knowledge."access a growing library of online courses to refresh their knowledge."

As edX emerges, MIT's new president reflects on the continued and evolving value of on-campus education.

Semester Online is a MOOC consortium intending to compete with edX

Georgetown University has been accepted by the leadership of EdX : "The addition of Georgetown to edX, which officials plan to announce Monday, marks the latest development in a fast-growing movement that aspires to connect the ivory tower to the world."

An interesting breakdown of statistics from MITx's first course last spring. They show some demographic / background information for a subset of 6,000 students who registered for the course (not necessarily completed the course).

The article uses EdX's flaws to discredit online education in general and makes some valuable points about what is not working using statistics from MIT's online courses from last year to provide evidence of online education failing.

UC Berkeley joins Harvard and MIT edX.

A complete list of free online courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity

The author believe startups led by young students themselves rather than old brick-and-mortar colleges and universities that will be responsible for changing the way students learn.

Dr. Saxberg's blog on an interesting research finding about teachers' misconceptions about how learning works. He also mentions (towards the end) his upcoming book. As you would recall Professor Dede had mentioned Dr. Saxberg in the context of EdX a few weeks ago.

Provides an interesting classification system for MOOCs, of which edX, Coursera, and Udacity fall into one category--content-based. The other two MOOC categories are network-based and task-based. Interesting argument...

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