Several high profile open course initiatives have attracted a lot of attention in recent months. These include Stanford Engineering Everywhere, (especially Sebastian Thrun’s popular Artificial Intelligence course), the internet start-up spin-off – Udacity, MITx, Coursera (Princeton, Stanford, Michigan and Pennsylvania) and now  edX, a collaboration between MIT and Harvard. Class Central lists 53 ongoing or upcoming open courses from top institutions. Clearly, collaboration between several institutions, and between traditional universities and private providers, is a trend.

The following is from MIT News (2 May 2012):

Online edX courses will open both universities’ classrooms to the world while enhancing on-campus learning.

“MIT President Susan Hockfield and Harvard University President Drew Faust, accompanied by top officials from both institutions, announced on Wednesday a new collaboration that will unite the Cambridge-based universities in an ambitious new partnership to deliver online education to learners anywhere in the world.

The new venture, called edX, will provide interactive classes from both Harvard and MIT — for free — to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. But a key goal of the project, Faust said, is “to enhance the educational experience of students who study in our classrooms and laboratories.”

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