FutureLearn Signs Up Ten Million Learners
In December 2012, eleven British universities joined with the Open University to launch a British-based MOOC provider: FutureLearn. The first courses, from 23 founding universities, appeared in October 2013. My first FutureLearn course was Start Writing Fiction in late 2014, when FutureLearn had fewer than 700,000 learners. The one million learners milestone was reached in…
Udacity Lays Off 20% of Staff, Continues Transformation
In new round of layoffs, Udacity cuts one fifth of its workforce. Measure is part of new leadership plan to turn company around. Other measures include restructuring leadership, downsizing offices. Class Central also notices that Udacity has frozen hiring, didn’t launch new scholarships, and hasn’t announced an Intersect Conference so far this year. Earlier this…
EdX’s 2019: Year in Review
In 2019, edX got a new co-CEO, gained more learners than in 2018, and a couple of the platform’s instructors won a Nobel prize. The total number of learners on edX grew to 24 million, up from 18 million last year. Before that, edX was gaining 4 million learners a year. As usual, edX launched…
Purdue University Announces Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering on edX
Purdue University became the 7th edX partner to launch a MOOC-based Master’s degree with the company. The Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering costs $22.5k and consists of 30 credits ($750/credit). It can take anywhere from 1 – 4 years to finish. This degree competes head-on with a similar degree from the University of Colorado,…
The Emergence of China’s Nationally-Recognized MOOCs
China MOOC Conference: MOOC team receiving award MOOCs took off in China in 2013 with the launch of XuetangX, China’s first MOOC platform, which was developed by Tsinghua University. Six years later, China offers over 12,500 MOOCs across more than 10 MOOC platforms. In July 2017, China’s Ministry of Education announced an initiative to recognize…
What’s On the Agenda at the 2019 Open edX Conference
Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers. February 7, 2019 2 minute read Comments The annual Open edX Conference is taking place next month in San Diego, and the conference agenda is now available. Open edX is the open source software that powers some of the largest MOOC…
Udacity Continues with Nanodegree Pricing Tweaks
When Udacity originally announced Nanodegrees, they had a monthly subscription price of $200/month. Over time Udacity announced programs such as a 50% tuition refund if students finished the course within a year and a job guarantee program. Eventually, these programs were shut down. Then under CEO Vishal Makhijani, who took over from Sebastian Thrun in…
The Coursera Community, a New Discussion Forum
Disclosure: Class Central is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. February 17, 2019 2 minute read Comments Until now, discussion forums have been limited to within single courses. When the course finished, connections would often be lost. Now, Coursera has come up with a platform-wide discussion board…
2019 Brings the Closure of a Free Course Provider
Disclosure: To support our site, Class Central may be compensated by some course providers. January 8, 2019 2 minute read Comments Open2Study opened its doors from Australia five years ago and has had nearly two million students. It was one of the few providers still offering free certificates. The First Clue A clue appeared about…
Call for Papers: Seventh Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale 2020
The 2020 Learning @ Scale (L@S) takes place on May 27 – 29, 2020 in Atlanta Georgia, at Georgia Tech Global Learning Center with a full workshop day on May 27, followed by two main conference days on May 28 – 29. At L@S the learning experience of students is placed in the center of…
