The change was sparked by demand from edX students for a wider variety of course content and demand from organizations to produce said content. These new (non-chartered) members will produce quality courses through edx.org and edX open source partners. EdX will be vetting these courses to ensure quality and significance. The first round of new members will include:
| Colleges/Universities |
Institutions |
|---|---|
| Colgate University | International Monetary Fund |
| Hamilton College | Inter-American Development Bank |
| OpenCourseWare Consortium | Learning by Giving Foundation (Buffett family philanthropy) |
| Osaka University | The Linux Foundation |
| Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | The Smithsonian Institution |
| Universidad Carlos III de Madrid |
Televisión Educativa, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico |
“EdX shares our values in increasing access to course material that can help learners achieve their personal goals and advance important technologies like Linux… EdX, like Linux Foundation, is not-for-profit and uses open source to innovate. Our partnership is a natural one, and we look forward to working together to bring important knowledge to the masses,” said Executive Director at the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin.
The chartered members, on the other hand, will still include founders MIT and Harvard as well as the previous 32 starting members, including University of Texas, University of Toronto and Cornell University. They will act as a counselling body to guide edX through its mission to:
- Increase access to education around the world
- Improve education on campus
- Research tools and methods to improve learning and teaching
Anant Agarwal, President of edX said, “Improving the quality of global education and student success remains at the core of the edX mission, and we are continuing to grow and expand as we build the next generation of online learning … We are energized by the increasing interest from leaders in academia, non-profits, NGOs, countries and industry to join the edX community, with many also using our open source technology. Through our new membership structure, we are opening up edx.org to a wider pool of quality course providers, while offering both our global learners and our open-source adopters additional diversity and richness in our course offerings.”
EdX offers courses in STEM, arts, health, law and humanities to students in over 150 countries. It also employs more than 400 staff and faculty. Through edX over 100,000 certificates have been issued to students to date.
Source edX