University Governance Favors the Standardization of Online Programs

"Authentic, differentiated, visionary programs are driving the future of higher education. Now, more than ever, institutions need to create something that is unique and of value," writes in eCampus News Furqan Nazeeri, a partner at Extension Engine, an educational consulting firm and edX provider based in Cambridge, MA. This consultant explains that institutions are stuck on standardization because "they have a governance structure that tends to favor the minimization of change and the reduction of risk." "Scaling offerings through online programs or courses has become an inherent part of growth for public, private, and non-traditional colleges and universities. And for some, it is even a matter of survival." In this context, he advises differentiating every learning experience "by creating authentic, adaptive, engaging, customized programs that embrace your institution’s distinctive approach to education."   • eCampus News: The single biggest mistake universities make when going online  

Harvard's LabXchange Will Re-Engineer the Open edX Platform to Allow Instructors to Remix Content

Installing and Deploying an Open edX Instance: A View from Developer and Author McDaniel

A New XBlock to Award Badges After an Assessment in the Course

IBM Launches on edX a Course About How to Build Chatbots and Make Money with Them

This 2 week course, with a 2-4 hour per week commitment per week, comes with a marketing promotion: one year of Watson Assistant services to power 10 chatbots at no charge. It requires to sign up for a free IBM Cloud account. Taught by Antonio Cangiano, software developer and technical evangelist at IBM, this five module course instructs on how to build, analyze, deploy, and monetize chatbots. In the third module, the instructor introduces Watson assistant. These chatbots can be deployed on WordPress sites. This course on edX is part of the IBM's Cognitive Class.ai initiative, based on providing data science and cognitive computer courses as a way to promote its IBM Cloud and Watson services. On Open edX, IBM strategy consists of building a multi-site network. IBM managers, Leon Katsnelson, Rav Ahuja and Luiz Aoqui, elaborated on that in a talk during the 2018 Open edX Conference in Montreal. [Slides, Video]

EdX Engineers Are Building a Transferrable Student Records Tool

Bill De Rusha, an edX engineer, shared some insights about this development on a talk from the 2018 Open edX conference in Montreal. The first implementation of transferrable student records will be available on edx.org in the coming weeks. This software is a need today for learners who want to apply their MicroMasters credentials as transfer credits and share their edX records with partner institutions. This is how they will look:

A New Edition of HarvardX's "Science & Cooking" Course on edX.org with More Top Chefs

An edX Survey Finds a Strong Appetite for Career Shifts

The Open edX Hawthorn Version Takes Its Final Steps Before Delivery

UC Berkeley Launches a Blockchain Fundamentals Program on edX

Responding to this demand of blockchain talent, UC Berkeley is releasing on July 9 at edx.org a 6-week Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies course, as the first online class of the Blockchain Fundamentals professional certificate program. This program, one of the most popular at the UC Berkeley campus and intended for students with no background in computer science, provides an understanding of how the blockchain and systems that are built on it, like Bitcoin, work.  

UQx Builds Tools to Expand Social Polling and Collaboration in Open edX

Among those developments, UQx, the digital unit of the university, has built several open source LTI tools for the Open edX platform, intended to encourage decision-making, enhance learners' sense of community, improve critical thinking and reflection, and facilitate the co-creation of knowledge. Its director, John Zorning, director at UQx, described these developments in a talk during the 2018 Open edX Conference in Montreal. (Video; Slides) The code is available at https://github.com/UQ-UQx. The University of Queensland is one of the most active members of edX and Open edX. To date, it has produced 53 MOOCs, and 4 MicroMasters, with an audience of 2 million learners.  

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