edX Opens Up Membership Structure, Adds 12 Organizations
edX is opening up its membership beyond its initial 32 charter institutions. With its new membership structure, the online course provider will bring colleges, universities and other organizations into the fold as regular members, including 12 new institutions announced today.
edX, a not-for-profit online course provider, has 32 charter members, which include Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both founding members, and 30 other institutions that make up the "xConsortium." Now edX comprises 32 charter institutions and 12 regular members, which range from colleges and universities to foundations and consortia.
The 12 new members announced today include:
- Colgate University;
- Hamilton College;
- Inter-American Development Bank;
- International Monetary Fund;
- Learning by Giving Foundation;
- The Linux Foundation;
- OpenCourseWare Consortium;
- Osaka University;
- The Smithsonian Institution;
- Television Educativa, Secretaria de Educacion Publica, Mexico
- Universidad Autonoma de Madrid; and
- Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
edX said all courses created by these institutions will be vetted for "relevance and quality."
"Improving the quality of global education and student success remains at the core of the edX mission, and we are continuing to grow and expand as we build the next generation of online learning," said Anant Agarwal, president of edX, in a prepared statement. "We are energized by the increasing interest from leaders in academia, non-profits, NGOs, countries and industry to join the edX community, with many also using our open source technology. Through our new membership structure, we are opening up edX.org to a wider pool of quality course providers, while offering both our global learners and our open-source adopters additional diversity and richness in our course offerings."
"edX shares our values in increasing access to course material that can help learners achieve their personal goals and advance important technologies like Linux," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, also in a prepared statement. "edX, like Linux Foundation, is not-for-profit and uses open source to innovate. Our partnership is a natural one, and we look forward to working together to bring important knowledge to the masses."
edX hosts about 150 courses, through which students have so far earned more than 100,000 certificates, edX reported.
Details about the new membership structure can be found at edX.org.