Distance Learning | News

edX Adds International Monetary Fund to Course Providers

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 06/19/13

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has partnered with edX in an effort to reach government leaders worldwide and open its training to the public.

Marking the first time the massive open online course (MOOC) platform has been used by an international government organization, the collaboration will kick off with pilots of two courses, "Financial Programming and Policies" and "Debt Sustainability Analysis." The pilot courses "will be rolled out to small groups of government officials in the coming months, with plans to open access to the general public during 2014," according to a news release about the collaboration.

"This collaboration with the IMF demonstrates another innovative use of the edX platform," said edX President Anant Agarwal, in a prepared statement. "We have seen universities use our platform to deliver educational content in ever-evolving ways — from blended learning to flipped classrooms to richer on-campus learning experiences. It is a natural progression for us to work with a variety of other institutions seeking a flexible, feature-rich and massively-scalable platform to deliver their own educational programs."

Currently, the IMF "offers policy-oriented courses to central bank, finance ministry and other officials from its 188 member countries" through eight training centers and programs, according to information released by the organization. Combining economic analysis with workshops designed to reflect "the experiences of its global membership," those courses cover topics in macroeconomics and finance, specialized training, and legal issues.

"We are delighted to join with edX in this new initiative, which will allow us to respond to the demands for more training from our member countries," said Sharmini Coorey, director of the IMF's Institute for Capacity Development, in a prepared statement. "The training we provide is aimed at increasing the capacity of officials to analyze and formulate sound macroeconomic and financial policies. We look forward to being able to offer online access to a broader audience through future massive open online courses. We hope that these short courses will be useful to students and teachers, the financial services industry, members of parliament and civil society, and many others, thus promoting greater understanding of economic policy issues."

More information about edX is available at edx.org. Go to imf.org to learn more about the International Monetary Fund.