Dive Brief:
- EdX, the nonprofit MOOC venture between Harvard and MIT, will offer its massive open online courses to high school students.
- The 27 courses produced for the initiative include foreign languages and AP sciences, math, and history, and universities like MIT and Georgetown had a hand in their creation.
- The courses are intended to supplement high school curriculum, helping to avoid the need for remedial coursework by better preparing students for higher ed.
Dive Insight:
High school students can pay $25-100 for completion certificates in the courses, which don't offer college credit. Earlier this year, at CES in Las Vegas, edX CEO Anant Agarwal stated that MOOCs could be a valuable tool for flipped and blended learning, and that seems at least like part of the idea with these high school offerings, as well. Additionally, of the high school MOOCs, Agarwal told eSchool News that around 150,000 edX users are already high school students, so meeting their needs is "a high priority."
Could students who take these courses for enrichment or supplemental learning eventually pay for the certificate and use that as proof of AP course completion, though? That remains to be seen.
