Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


UC Berkeley Joins EdX

The University of California, Berkeley last week announced that it has joined edX, the not-for-profit online learning collaborative launched this spring by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). UC Berkeley will offer two classes through the edX platform, starting this fall.

EdX offers free, open online courses to any student with access to a computer and Internet connection. The initiative first launched in December 2011 with MIT's 6.002x course, which garnered registration from more than 150,000 students across the globe. In May, MIT partnered with Harvard to create edX. UC Berkeley is the latest institution to join the initiative and will chair its "X University" Consortium.

"We are very excited that UC Berkeley is joining us in this effort," said Anant Agarwal, president of edX, in a prepared statement. "EdX is about revolutionizing learning, and we have received a tremendous outpouring of excitement and interest from universities around the world. UC Berkeley is an extraordinary public institution known not only for its academic excellence but also for its innovativeness. With this collaboration, edX is now positioned to improve education more rapidly, both online and on-campus worldwide."

EdX will offer a total of seven classes this fall. The classes offered through HarvardX include "Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research" and "Computer Science 50." MITx will deliver "Introduction to Computer Science and Programming", "Introduction to Solid State Chemistry", and "Circuits and Electronics." Classes through BerkeleyX include "Artificial Intelligence" and "Software as a Service." EdX will issue certificates of mastery, at no charge, for these introductory courses to those "learners motivated and able to demonstrate their knowledge of the course material."

UC Berkeley will contribute new open source technology to edX. The learning platform will be released for others to use, though a release date has not yet been determined. The consortium also plans to add new "X Universities" to the platform in the near future.

About the Author

Kanoe Namahoe is online editor for 1105 Media's Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • programming code and digital gears

    NVIDIA Intros Open Source Tools for Building and Deploying AI Agents

    At its recent GTC 2026 conference, NVIDIA rolled out a new open source software package designed to help organizations build, deploy, and manage AI agents.

  • cyber security padlock

    AI Adoption Forces Trade-Off Between Speed and Identity Security, Study Finds

    AI adoption is forcing enterprises to trade security for speed — and identity controls are the first casualty, according to a new report from Delinea, a provider of identity security solutions for both human and AI agent identities.

  • large group of college students sitting on an academic quad

    Student Readiness: Learning to Learn

    Melissa Loble, Instructure's chief academic officer, recommends a focus on 'readiness' as a broader concept as we try to understand how to build meaningful education experiences that can form a bridge from the university to the workplace. Here, we ask Loble what readiness is and how to offer students the ability to 'learn to learn'.

  • Digital Network of User Profiles and Data Connections

    Microsoft, RSA Make Identity Security Push in the Age of AI

    Two of the bigger authentication announcements to come out of the recent RSA Conference both point in the same direction: Organizations need a more flexible, unified approach to identity security, especially as AI agents start acting alongside human workers.