One Course, 150,000 Students

  • Lewin T
ISSN: 03624331
N/ACitations
Citations of this article
8Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

AT the May announcement of edX, the Harvard-M.I.T. partnership that will offer free online courses with a certificate of completion, Susan Hockfield, the president of M.I.T., declared: ''Fasten your seat belts.'' If anyone was ready for the ride -- the $60 million venture aims to reach a billion people -- it was Anant Agarwal, the director of M.I.T.'s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Mr. Agarwal, named the first president of edX, describes himself as a ''serial entrepreneur'' who first went into business as a child in Mangalore, India, building coops for 40 chickens and selling their eggs. Start-ups still call to him: in 2005-6, he took time off from M.I.T. to create a semiconductor company. And in December, when M.I.T. decided to plunge into the world of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, with a new platform called MITx (now folded into edX), he came forward to teach the first offering, which ran March 5 to June 8 and enrolled over 150,000. How did you come to teach the first course? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Lewin, T. (2012). One Course, 150,000 Students. New York Times, p. 33. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/education/edlife/anant-agarwal-discusses-free-online-courses-offered-by-a-harvard-mit-partnership.html?_r=0

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free