Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, made this prediction last Wednesday during the 2018 Open edX Conference opening keynote in Montréal, Canada. Mr. Agarwal also disclosed that the number of Open edX instances has grown from 800 instances in 2017 to 1,500 in 2018, with over 18,000 courses and 35 million learners. The keynote, titled "Reimagine Education Goals for 2022", available on YouTube, highlighted the goal of fully leveraging the power of digital technology for learning. According to Mr. Agarwal, it could be accomplished through AI-powered personalized learning (e.g. HarvardX Super-Earth, Quant Methods courses), leveraging the engagement of VR and AR, and harnessing the power of networks, such as crowdsourced hinting. Additional challenges will be based on unleashing the power of cognitive science (e.g. retrieval learning), as well as deploying deep analytics for learner engagement and platform stickiness. Another highlighted goal was to establish lifelong learning for all by creating a community, developing a portfolio of valued as well as relevant credentials and partnering with corporations. edX has plans to challenge its member partners to accelerate one year of Bachelor's degrees with online credit, offer 20 percent of undergrad education to campus students fully online as well as offer both fully online and campus degrees and micro credentials at the Master's level. Finally, Anant Agarwal presented the goal of building a fully modular model for education. What follows are the main slides of his presentation: YouTube: Keynote address of Anant Agarwal in 2018 Open edX Conference IBL News: A Successful 2018 Open edX Conference in Montréal
This software extension, released as open source, will allow instructors to assign nbgrader-instrumented notebooks into the Open edX platform. It will be officially presented by Lorena Barba and Miguel Amigot, CTO at IBL, during the upcoming Open edX conference in Montreal, Canada, on May 30. This XBlock uses Docker and nbgrader to create a Python environment and auto-grade a Jupyter Notebook, and tracks the resulting score as a problem with an edX graded sub-section. It allows an instructor to upload the student's version of an assignment created with nbgrader, upload a requirements.txt file to configure the environment, and set the maximum number of tries for the student. The student downloads the assignment file, answers the questions (executing all cells), and uploads the solution, which gets immediately auto-graded. The student gets a visual score report, and the score gets added to his/her progress in the Open edX gradebook. Features and Support of the Jupyter EdX Graded XBlook: Integrated into edX Grading System Maximum point values are pulled from the instructor version of the notebook A separate Python3 virtual environment is kept for each course Each student's notebook is run within its own Docker container Several Other Configuration Options Only supports auto-graded cells – Does not support manually graded cells. We now announce the Graded #Jupyter Notebook Integration for #OpenEdx, in collaboration with @iblstudios: instructors can assign #nbgrader-instrumented notebooks in the #MOOC platform! https://t.co/1vz9NK5xHb https://t.co/rDywbvUPWb — Lorena Barba (@LorenaABarba) May 15, 2018 This is the video demo: • The  Jupyter EdX Graded XBlock on GitHub • IBL, April 28: An Open edX XBlock to Load Content from a Jupyter Notebook
Also, during this month of May, another Colombian institution, the Javeriana University, renewed its agreement with edX Inc. 2021. REVENUES AND EXPENSES Getting prominent universities is part of edX's mission, as well as an important source of revenue. In 2016 membership dues provided $6.5 million, while certificates generated $12.8 million. However, in terms of total revenues, contributions and grants – with $23.8 million – were the most relevant chapter. In the same year, the total revenue of edX Inc. was $42.8 million, while expenses reached $46 million. In salaries, compensation, and employee benefits, the expenses were $24.3 million, with the first executive, CEO Anant Agarwal, making $715,000 that year. • PDF Document: Tax return document files by edX Inc.
A study by Karl Kapp and Robyn Defelice (Kapp is the author of bestselling “The Gamification of eLearning and Instruction”) demonstrates the timeframes for producing one hour of distance learning materials and shows that it takes 90-240 hours on average. Another research by Chapman Alliance conducted back in 2010 states that one hour of e-learning costs around $10,000 to produce. Hourly rates vary depending upon the team selection — composing the team on Upwork, SalaryExpert.com, Indeed.com, hiring a contractor’s team to produce the content or working with individual experts. Based on Racoon Gang's research, one hour of e-learning content takes 100-160 hours to produce, and it costs $8,880-$28,640 ($18,760 on average) to produce.
Regarding enrollments by date, analytics show a descent in the last year to less than 4 million enrollments. In terms of traffic at the portal, the number of active users every day is 425,793, with 75 % of them browsing through their desktops. It is also interesting to examine the funnel of engagement, from registered learners to the ones who complete their courses.
