MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

I feel pretty disturbing about this.

One of the determining feature of edX is it is backed by MIT. And that's also the reason why I trust the platform to give out information.

I don't want to be machine learnt on the Internet.

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 many good non-profits and there are many terrible ones (highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing).

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, every course says "Course began ($TODAY-5)" to make you feel like "wow, I got here just in time! I better sign up for everything!".

* Breaking courses into useless 2-minute chunks and constant unhelpful quizzes. I really just want to hear the lecturer speak for 20-30 minutes at a time uninterrupted, especially if I'm listening while doing dishes etc.

* An unsettling UI that feels less like it's about presenting information in a compact and/or digestible way and more like it's tracking my every move and waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Everything is a button or clickthrough menu that requires interaction.

Thankfully MIT OpenCourseWare still has plenty of lecture videos / course materials available. But I'm quite afraid for the future.

Coursera and Udemy are two radically different platforms.

Udemy has a very standard pricing model. You pay what you use (=courses), so I don't see any way this can significantly change either way. The teachers are private and not institutions, so it would likely be unprofitable to adopt a "significantly-free" freemium model.

Coursera, Edx and so on apply instead the freemium model, which could be under theoretical threat (eg. reduce availability of free material, introduce ads, etc.). However, I've been using them for a while, and I didn't really experience any impact due to this supposed monetization orientation - the courses are still free, and there's no pressure to pay for them. I actually pay each course.

To be honest, I'm much more annoyed by the terrible, terrible UX of their products. There are also certainly some dark patterns, which I find dishonest, but at the end of the day, courses are free, and one can take them without interruption.

A personal note: I actually find negative the association between well-known institutions and learning platforms. For example, Harward and EdX- the certificates are stamped as HarvadX, which is an intentional disassociation. This is fair, however, customers/students tend to associate prestige with the MOOC, which is misleading. There's a lot of people around who think that MOOC certificate have formal value.

Apparently Bono is into academia now