Not only has the internet become student's preferred method to do research, but some websites are entirely dedicated to the education industry, providing them with a breadth of online resources.
One such website is EdX, a non-profit that contains course content from several institutions including MIT, Harvard, University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. Unfortunately, one of its major drawbacks is that the material comes exclusively from the partnering universities; it’s not exactly a comprehensive guide to everything.
According to The Wall Street Journal EdX has joined forces with Google to create a brand new learning portal. Formally dubbed Mooc.org, this name is an acronym for Massive Open Online Courses. As the name suggests, its mission is to provide everyone with the opportunity to create their own digital course, whether they’re an established educator, a business professional or a member of the general public.
In describing the initiative, EdX president Anant Agarwal compared his website to one of the world’s largest crowd-sourced databases: “We want to be the YouTube for Moocs. Anyone can create a course – we are all learners and teachers.”
Classes offered by EdX.org have serviced over 1.2 million students. The advantage of EdX is that each course has been carefully designed to ensure quality control and is represented by a brand-name institution. Mooc aims to appeal to the other end of the spectrum, and is already drawing parallels to the teaching style described in the college film Accepted.
Although EdX has explicit ties to the education industry, so does Google. Just last year, Google unveiled Course Builder, an online system for creating classes. In addition to integrating this system into the upcoming website design, Google will also be using its cloud-computing service to host Mooc.org.
Mooc.org will reportedly launch in the first half of 2014.
