The College announced today that it will begin offering MOOCs, or massive open online courses, through the online learning platform edX. DartmouthX will launch its initial course this fall and plans to offer three additional MOOCs during the 2014-2015 year.
The online courses will be taught by Dartmouth faculty, who will receive support from academic computing and library staff to create and manage their online course content, according to a College press release. The College’s MOOCs will be open at no cost to any interested student with access to a computer and the Internet.
College President Phil Hanlon said he is excited to see how new technologies can boost the College’s reach. Hanlon previously served on the advisory board of Coursera, another MOOC provider.
“By joining edX, we enable our faculty to pave the way for the future, discovering new ways to teach that will take Dartmouth’s classrooms to the world,” Hanlon said in a statement.
On Jan. 21, researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University released a report examining student engagement with 17 online courses offered by MITx and HarvardX, each institution’s subset of edX. During the 2012-2013 academic year, HarvardX and MITX received more than 800,000 registrations from nearly 600,000 users for the 17 MOOCs examined. The report found that approximately35 percent of registrants never viewed any of the course materials, about four percent viewed over half of the course material and about five percent earned certificates of completion.
Founded by Harvard and the MIT in 2012, edX is a nonprofit organization that supports MOOCs from over 30 institutions worldwide. The courses are taught through self-paced modules and include assessments and activities that promote peer interaction.
