Google is jumping onto the massive open online course
(MOOC) bandwagon in a partnership with edX to create an open-source learning
platform to be called mooc.org.
The companies will work together to develop the Open edX learning
platform for professors to use to conduct courses online and will make it
available to students, teachers, institutions, businesses, and governments
worldwide.
The partnership allows Google to expand on its Course
Builder open-source platform for creating online courses that it launched last
year. The site is expected to go live early next year.
Google also announced a partnership with Udacity to
form the Open Education Alliance,
a project focused on teaching skills needed to find jobs in the tech industry.
These partnerships could signal a Google move into the
education market.
“We support the development of a diverse education
ecosystem as learning expands in the online world,” Google Director of Research
Dan Clancy wrote in a blog post. “Part of that means that educational
institutions should easily be able to bring their content online and manage
their relationships with their students. Our industry is in the early stages of
MOOCs, and lots of experimentation is still needed to find the best way to meet
the educational needs of the world. An open ecosystem with multiple players
encourages rapid experimentation and innovation, and we applaud the work going
on in this space today.”
