EdX Partners with Google to Advance Open Source Platform

UPDATED: September 10, 2013, at 11:16 p.m.

EdX will collaborate with technology giant Google to develop Open edX, the virtual learning initiative’s open source platform, the two companies announced Tuesday morning.

According to an edX press release, the collaboration seeks to broaden the availability of Open edX and its educational tools to individuals and institutions outside of the xConsortium—the group of schools officially participating in edX—by launching the new website MOOC.org. The site, which will be built on Google’s infrastructure and will go live in the first half of 2014, is meant to enable universities, businesses, governments, and teachers worldwide to create and host online courses.

HarvardX spokesperson Michael P. Rutter wrote in an emailed statement that the University’s branch of edX is enthusiastic about the collaboration.

“We are excited that Google will be helping to further develop an open source learning platform that has and will continue to support innovative teaching by our faculty,” Rutter wrote.

In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, edX President Anant Agarwal expressed ambitious plans for the platform. “We want to be the YouTube for MOOCs,”he said, referring to the acronym for massive open online courses.

However, while YouTube relies on an ad-supported revenue model, edX leadership has yet to cement a revenue plan for MOOC.org.

“We want to be able to monetize MOOC.org much the same as how we want to monetize edX,” Agarwal told the Chronicle. “But specifically how we want to monetize MOOC.org is TBD.”

Dan Clancy, Google’s director of research, wrote in a blog post on Google’s Open Source Blog that Google will apply findings from its own foray into digital learning to its collaboration with edX. Google released an online education platform called Course Builder last year and will continue to maintain the project while working with edX, Clancy wrote.

In addition to experimenting with higher education on MOOC.org, Google has also become a partner in the Open Education Alliance, an initiative which aims to enable student access to education for careers in technology.

Both Google and edX already have roots in Kendall Square. Google has its Boston offices at 5 Cambridge Center. EdX, which was founded by MIT and Harvard in May 2012, currently has offices at 11 Cambridge Center and plans to move about a block away to 141 Portland St. in January.

—Staff writer Amna H. Hashmi can be reached at amna.hashmi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @amna_hashmi.