ABSTRACT
In 2011, MIT and Harvard, who had been closely watching innovations in online learning as part of their continual exploration of the future of higher education, decided to fund and launch a daring and innovative nonprofit company to share their courses with the world beyond their own campus. Enter edX, the online MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform solution that would be more cost-effective and scalable than building multiple brick-and-mortar campuses. Since 2011, edX has led the MOOC movement that changed the world for good. This chapter follows the development of MOOCs from fueling single and stand-alone courses to fostering game changing, modular credentials that have the power to transform how both universities and corporations approach educating learners to meet the demands of the future workplace. The chapter explores how MOOCs unlocked the potential to radically change the way education is delivered on a global scale in developing countries and to understand why the many innovations that MOOCs have enabled play a pivotal role in tackling inequity created by a growing skills gap and an education system disrupted completely by a pandemic.
