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What's Next for MOOCs?

Anant Agarwal, CEO, edX
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Anant Agarwal, CEO, edX
Headquartered in Massachusetts, edX is a leading MOOC provider enabling the global student community with a suite of university-level courses across a wide array of verticals. These courses also include an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions & comments with each other.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are revolutionizing the education space, racking up students all over the world in the millions. They are also the great democratizer; with the advent of MOOCs, economics, social status, gender or geography no longer determine access to education or opportunity for success. However, as MOOCs grow in popularity and reach, there is still much work to be done to truly spread quality education all around the world, but the process has definitely begun. Two important developments in how MOOCs are leading the way to democratize education are the blended learning model and the unbundling of education. Below, we explore these approaches in more detail:

A Blended Learning Model

MOOCs won't replace universities, but rather enhance the quality of education by incorporating blended learning. In the future, education will either be blended or fully online. Purely face-to-face education will exist only in the history books.

So, when we say 'education technology', 'edtech', or 'online learning', it is not to say that teachers and in-person interactions are being replaced. Edtech takes many forms, but behind most advances lies a desire to help teachers improve, make teaching more impactful and efficient, to create new and better opportunities for students, and even to bring back joy and discovery to the classroom.


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