Harvard Forms $60 Million Venture With MIT for Online Courses

Harvard University will team with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer online courses from their faculties to students around the world that will include quizzes and certificates upon completion.

The nonprofit venture, called EdX, will be funded with $30 million from each of the universities and will begin offering courses this year, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based schools said today in a statement.

MIT, which has put course material online for a decade, in February introduced MITx, an online program of courses with homework, exams and discussion forums. The new venture with Harvard will be based on MITx’s technology platform, according to the statement. Other universities may join them in offering courses, the schools said.

“EdX gives Harvard and MIT an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically extend our collective reach,” Harvard President Drew Faust said in the statement.

EdX will be run by Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who led the development of MITx.

The courses will feature video segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and online laboratories, the schools said.

The project will be used to research which methods of online education are most effective and to help develop course material of Harvard and MIT students, according to the statement. It won’t be used to substitute classroom learning.

“The campus environment offers opportunities and experiences that cannot be replicated online,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said in the statement. “EdX is designed to improve, not replace the campus experience.”