A not-for-profit education company has added 15 new schools to a list now totaling 27 that will offer free college courses online, according to a report by the Washington Post.
The company, edX, was founded a year ago by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Its goal is to make college courses accessible to students all over the world using massive open online courses (MOOCs) and interactive online classes.
edX added Berkeley College of Music and Boston University (BU) on Tuesday, along with, 13 other schools to its list of participating institutions, more than doubling their previous total. The company now has 27 schools, including Harvard and MIT, as well as, various schools in Asia, Australia and Europe.
"It's going like a rocket ship," Anant Agarwal, president of edX, told Boston.com. "All have a commitment to high-quality education, a commitment to increasing access to education for students around the world, and also improving campus education."
Harvard and MIT started edX, a $60 million initiative, to offer online college courses at no charge. It currently offers about 50 courses, but as recent activity suggests, the company is growing rapidly.
"Through this partnership we will not only make knowledge more available but we will learn more about learning," Faust said at a news conference at the time of edX's launch. "Anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can have access."
BU will be required to offer five MOOCs per year, but the school plans on creating hybrid courses. The hybrid courses will combine in-class instruction online work and will be available in a few years while the MOOCs will be ready in one year.
"I am pleased to help pioneer the development of digital learning environments," BU President Robert A. Brown told BU USA Today. "And I'm excited about the opportunity to use these enhanced learning tools for our residential students, and to invent new hybrid educational platforms as the next step in our ongoing significant commitment to online learning."
