This initiative is huge: 26 new, free MOOCs developed by top universities for high schoolers in the U.S. and all around the world, to be launched through the edx.org educational portal within a few months. Subjects range from Computer Science, Mathematics and Chemistry to History and English. Currently, 22 high school courses are open for registration.
“We know that nearly 150,000 edX learners are high school students, and developing high quality, engaging, and interactive courses to specifically meet the needs of this student population is a high priority for us at edX,” explains edX’s president, Anant Agarwal. In addition, these courses will meet the needs of students interested in entry-level course materials – 90 percent of edX learners according to this organization.
To identify the best courses, edX issued a request for course proposals offering seed funding of up to $50,000 per course for support services. They received 75 proposals from 22 institutions before selecting 26 courses from 14 leading institutions. Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Wertheimer Fund, Fariborz Maseeh / The Massiah Foundation granted funds for the content creation, while edX committed to provide training services, including pedagogy’s best practices, media consultation and video transcriptions. [Disclosure: IBL Studios is providing the film services of two of those MOOCs].
Participating academic institutions are:
- Boston University
- Georgetown University
- MIT
- Rice University
- TU Delft
- UC Berkeley
- Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
- UT Arlington
- UT Austin
- Wellesley College
- Davidson College
- Cooper Union
- School Yourself
- St. Margaret’s Episcopal School
- Tennessee Board of Regents
- Weston Public High School
The last five are non-edX members.
Currently, 22 high school courses are open for registration at edx.org.
