Georgetown to offer free online courses

By Nick Anderson. Georgetown University is joining one of the most prominent ventures in online higher education, a Web platform known as edX that provides courses from elite schools to a global audience free of charge.
The addition of Georgetown to edX, which officials plan to announce Monday, marks the latest development in a fast-growing movement that aspires to connect the ivory tower to the world.
Millions of people have signed up this year on various Web sites for massive, open online courses, or MOOCs, which offer self-paced learning through video lectures, tests, homework, discussion boards and other digital interfaces. Advocates say MOOCs will democratize higher education and spark a teaching revolution on campuses. Skeptics call it little more than brand promotion.
EdX, which Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched in May, hosts MOOCs from those schools and the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Texas system joined in October and Wellesley College last week. Like Georgetown, they plan to add MOOCs to edX next year. Another MOOC platform, Coursera, which launched in April, hosts classes from Johns Hopkins University and the universities of Maryland and Virginia, as well as 30 other major U.S. and foreign institutions. Read more...