President L. Rafael Reif speaks with John Hockenberry of The Takeaway about edX. “Imagine a situation in which not only those who get admitted get to learn from Harvard professors and MIT professors, but everybody who is willing to try,” says Reif of the power of online education.
MIT has launched the Online Education Policy Initiative to investigate and make recommendations about the future of online learning, Inside Higher Education reports. The initiative “will over the next nine months release reports, host workshops and lecture series, and eventually make recommendations about online learning.”
Anya Kamenetz reports for NPR on a new MIT-Harvard study examining data compiled from two years of courses offered by edX. Researchers found that a large number of Greek and Spanish citizens took MOOCs, leading them to wonder if austerity measures in these two countries led students to “look online for an education alternative.”
A new MIT-Harvard study examining two years of edX courses found that nearly 40 percent of online learners are teachers, reports Kirk Carapezza for the PBS NewsHour. The findings have researchers wondering how to better design online courses "to meet teachers’ needs.”
MIT and Harvard have released a comprehensive new report examining MOOCS offered by edX over a two-year period, reports Carl Straumsheim for Inside Higher Ed. The researchers found that while more than half of total enrollment was in edX computer science courses, “learner demographics and intent vary by the courses they take.”
A study examining courses offered through edX, the nonprofit learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT, found that teachers are enrolling in MOOCS in large numbers, reports Casey Fabris for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Of the 200,000 participants who responded to a survey about teaching, “39 percent of them said they were current or former teachers.”
Senior Lecturer Otto Scharmer writes about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ‘U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self’ that connects students in 350 hubs across the world: “[I]n the U.Lab, we didn't try to replace the classroom. Instead, we decentralized it, then took the learning out of the classroom altogether.”
The Cambridge Chronicle reports that alumnus Samuel Tak Lee has donated $118 million to establish a real estate entrepreneurship lab at MIT. The lab will have a particular focus on China, and “will promote social responsibility among entrepreneurs and academics in the real estate profession worldwide.”
Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, speaks with Jeremy Hobson of WBUR’s Here and Now about edX and the future of massive open online courses and digital learning. “Our aim is to increase access to learning to people all over the world,” says Agarwal.
Tech reporter Amy Wang writes about the recent gift from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee that will establish a real estate entrepreneurship lab at MIT. “Real estate and urban planning is very interdisciplinary to begin with, so this donation already is incredibly well positioned to generate opportunities across all fields,” says Prof. Albert Saiz.
Robert Olsen of Forbes profiles MIT alumnus Samuel Tak Lee, who recently made one of the largest gifts in MIT’s history to establish a real estate entrepreneurship lab. “Now that he’s achieved such success, he’s helping others to follow a similar path by supporting the schools he attended,” writes Olsen.
Inside Higher Ed reports on the $118 million gift from MIT alumnus Samuel Tak Lee that will be used to establish a real estate entrepreneurship lab at MIT. The gift, one of the largest in MIT’s history, is aimed at exploring sustainability and social responsibility in the field of real estate.
Jack Newsham writes for The Boston Globe about the new gift from MIT alumnus Samuel Tak Lee to “fund the study of sustainable real estate development” through the creation of a new lab at MIT. The lab will have a focus on China, “a country where the real estate sector is rapidly changing.”
A gift from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee will be used to establish a new MIT lab for sustainable real estate development, reports Chris Staiti of Bloomberg News. The gift will “help design a program that ties the study of real estate to 21st-century realities.”
Carl Straumsheim of Inside Higher Ed writes about the future of higher education at MIT and research universities across the country. Straumsheim writes that MIT plans to “modularize” education, “breaking courses down into smaller modules that can be taken on their own or shuffled and rearranged into a more personalized experience.”