161–170 of 202 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FUN ( https://www.fun-mooc.fr ) is another good option that seems to be keeping it together. I haven't counted, but I think that most the courses are available in English.
A quick survey - I see French being used.
For what it's worth, the ratio of English language seems to be higher for the programming MOOCs than it is for most the other subject areas.
Note that the benefits of the sale ($800M) will all go to a non-profit dedicated to the development of the Open edX project. This just gave the project one of the largest warchests of any open source project, and freed it from the sometimes conflicting needs of monetization edx.org had.
The $800M will be used to line the pockets of privileged MIT professors. It will be as effective at closing equity gaps as supply-side (trickle-down) economics. 60% will go to overhead, which will fund faculty clubs and yachts. From there, a ton will go into generous salaries and benefits packages. And so on down the line.
I am willing to bet that this will be equivalent to giving maybe $10M to an HBCU, in terms of benefits to the poor.
From 2U's press release [ https://2u.com/latest/industry-redefining-combination/ ] it's clear that they benefit significantly from associating themselves with the MIT, Harvard, and EdX brands. At $800M, I assume they have a well-planned monetization strategy for EdX. My personal experience with EdX over the years is mixed. I audited a few EdX courses (CS50, Linear Algebra) and generally enjoyed the quality and pace o…
edX was overmonetized. If you want to see corruption on a grander scale, see where this $800M goes.
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Having a highly paid executive (even multiple) doesn't make a non-profit "terrible." People deserve to be compensated for their work and you'll have a hard time arguing that running a large non-profit successfully isn't challenging, demanding, and deserving of good compensation.
In abstract, no. In practice, in this case, yes. This was an odd way of channeling money into private pockets of well-connected people at MIT. Anyone know of a good way to reach a good investigative reporter?
There isn't much of a story here. Of the top 10 officers listed on page 7 of the 990, only two—Anant and Adam—work directly for edX. The directors are MIT or Harvard employees.
This transfer values edX, Inc. at $800M. Would anyone be complaining if the board and execs of a for-profit near-unicorn made $500K-$1M per year? I highly doubt it.
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They are basically graduate certificates, which are a normal university thing. You take 3-5 graduate courses, they give you a certificate saying that you did this, you give them money. Not a full blown masters, thus the micromasters branding, but it can open the door to changing a career or entering a specialization.
Its even less than that. This micro masters is sold as an entry point for a full-fledged masters program. The order of operations is something like: 1. Complete the micromasters courses at your speed. 2. Get a passing grade in a proctored exam. 3. Get accepted to a masters program with 1/2 of your credits taken care of. 4. Finish the masters degree on-campus.
Like others, this worries me. Does anyone know of a platform or service that backs up quality educational content (think Coursera, edX, YouTube lectures, etc.) forever, so that its open-access is not at the whim of a for-profit corporation?
> Nearly 10% of the students have paid for a certificate. I do not know how much server hosting costs, but given the cost of a certificate being several tens of Euros, I wouldn't be surprised if this covered costs (though I'm not aware if the uni gets a cut).
> Apparently the main issue with Coursera (which is why our uni chose edX) was over copyright - edX material remains owned by the creating uni and not edX itself. I wonder how this will be impacted by this change.
This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are ma…
I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site…
This is a huge bummer. edX was the prime example I would hold up when people said "remote learning is terrible". Several of the courses I took on there ranked among some of the best classes I've ever taken, in-person or otherwise. I agree with another commenter in that I had hoped it would persist since 1) education is ostensibly the business of Harvard and MIT and 2) Their pockets are deep enough to think long-term.…