As U-M continues to explore platforms for experimenting with digital education, the Office of Digital Education & Innovation and the Digital Innovation Advisory Group will host the CEO of online provider edX. Anant Agarwal will be the featured speaker at a session from 4-6 p.m. Tuesday, at the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery.
Agarwal will discuss edX and the evolving higher ed. landscape. Faculty, staff and students are invited to stay for a light reception to talk about the future of higher education at Michigan and beyond. This public talk marks the first event of the new Academic Innovation at Michigan series powered by DEI.
edX is an online learning provider developed by MIT and Harvard. It boasts some 60 members and more than 5 million learners worldwide. While edX provides a platform for member universities to offer massive open online courses (MOOCS), it has distinguished itself by a focus on research to advance teaching and learning, and is an open source.
Agarwal, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, taught the first edX course to some 155,000 students from 162 countries. Scientific American selected his work on organic computing as one of 10 World- Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes’ list of top 15 education innovators in 2012.
U-M currently is affiliated with two platform providers, Coursera and NovoEd. It also is a founding member of Unizin, a consortium of 11 universities that have come together to create and share digital tools and data, and to enhance digital learning. The university has reached more than 3.4 million lifelong learners over the last three years through its MOOC initiative.
