Did MOOCs undermined or even replaced the traditional college education? On the contrary: they have offered an effective way to close the skills gap. Daphne Koller, cofounder and president of Coursera, shares her view in the MIT Technology Review magazine: Only 15 percent of Coursera's learners [this company has 10 million enrolled students] are college age. The other 85 percent are adults looking to expand their horizons and working adults working to build critical jobs skills for a better career. Many the skills they seek –data science, mobile apps, digital marketing– didn't event exist a decade ago.  To complete a MOOC is a measure that brings tangible benefits, including new jobs, new responsibilities, and promotions. A four-year degree is no longer sufficient for a lifelong career. MOOCs can be an important component to better suit the learning needs of the 21st century.
According to OpenHub.net, it is $5,4 million. This math comes from considering that the size of the Open edX codebase size is 374,602 lines, the average salary of a developer is $55,000 per year and the estimated effort amounts to 99 person-years. The Basic COCOMO model, an algorithmic software cost model, was used for the estimate.
Finding documentation about Open edX's functionalities is not an easy task.
When you produce a blended course or a MOOC you realize how important it is to have free digital teaching and learning content at your disposal. 1. Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons. Almost everything (peer-reviewed textbooks, lesson plans, video lectures, worksheets…). Creative Commons-licensed and open for modification and adaptation. 2. Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. Colleges, government agencies, and other education organizations belong to this group. 3. Flat World Knowledge. Creative Commons-licensed material. 4. HippoCampus. Intended for high school and college students and instructors interested in supplementing their course materials. 5. Open Textbook Catalog. Customizable and printable online textbooks. 6. P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University). This organization leverages both open content and the open social web. 7. CK-12. This foundation provides free, openly-licensed digital textbooks for K-12. 8. Shmoop. Writing guides, analyses, discussions and other free resources. 9. Curriki. Free-to-use digital learning and teaching material. 10. MIT Open CourseWare: Videos, lectures, exams… all open to the public and free of charge.
edX is growing fast and as a result there are sixteen new job positions available at edX's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Engineers, analysts, designers, developers, interns, etc. edX's workforce is formed today of 120 employees, and 40 of them are developers.
