Communications of the ACM
Mit's New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program's Leader Says
MIT Professor Anant Agarwal plans to make the software for MITx, a set of online courses, available online.
Credit: MIT CSAIL
In an interview, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) provost L. Rafael Reif and professor Anant Agarwal say MITx, a new set of online courses, will be run separately from OpenCourseWare, which puts materials from its traditional courses online.
MITx will focus on creating new courses designed to be delivered entirely online and for free to the public. Students who want a certificate after passing a series of online tests will have to pay a modest fee.
To verify students, MIT plans to work with companies that offer testing sites around the world, including providing identity checks and proctoring services for the exams. Agarwal notes that MIT will give certificates with an actual letter grade for completing MITx courses. He also says the plan is to make the MITx software available online, and notes that there has been much interest from other universities and school systems in licensing the technology.
"Our objective is to actually use MITx to even increase further what we do on campus, to make it stronger and to be able to resist and survive and do very well in this potential disruptive situation," Reif says. Agarwal believes that online technologies and mechanisms will improve the on-campus experience.
From Chronicle of Higher Education
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc. 
, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found