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McGill joining other leading universities in not-for-profit enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT

McGill University is pleased to announce that today it will be joining several other universities around the world as a member of the edX consortium, founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McGill plans to begin offering “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) in 2014.MOOCs represent a fast-growing and transformational innovation in higher education. McGill University shares with the edX online learning initiative a vision and set of objectives that will connect the learning styles and expectations of today’s university students and life-long learners with state-of-the-art developments in digital learning environments.Renowned professors at McGill, working closely with edX technical and production teams, will design, develop, and deliver MOOCs, with initial course offerings to cover areas in sciences, humanities, and public policy.MOOCs can widen access to quality educational experiences for large numbers of people and help educators to understand how learning can best be supported in the context of the online world. McGill’s Provost, Prof. Anthony C. Masi, notes, "Membership in the edX consortium ensures access to massive datasets that provide unprecedented opportunities to study how students learn in digital environments, to develop assessment tools for these broadly distributed platforms, and to improve technology-supported learning on campus.”"We welcome the opportunity to collaborate in the edX consortium, where we join other leading universities as pioneers in digital pedagogy for the global online learning community,” said Professor Heather Munroe-Blum, Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill University.“McGill University is a global leader in higher education and we welcome them to the edX family,” said Anant Agarwal, President of edX. “For 190 years they have produced generations of well-rounded graduates and cutting-edge research and they bring a unique set of courses to edX students.”

About edX

EdX is a not-for-profit enterprise of its founding partners Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that features learning designed specifically for interactive study via the web. Based on a long history of collaboration and their shared educational missions the founders are creating a new online-learning experience. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can transform learning—both on-campus and worldwide. EdX is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To date, edX has more than 675,000 individuals using its platform. Its objective is to educate one billion people worldwide in 10 years. For more information about edX: https://www.edx.org/



About McGill University

Founded in Montreal, Que., in 1821, McGill is a leading Canadian post-secondary institution. It has two campuses, 11 faculties, 11 professional schools, 300 programs of study and some 38,000 students, including 8,800 graduate students. McGill attracts students from over 150 countries around the world, with more than 7,700 international students making up 20 per cent of the student body. Almost half of McGill students claim a first language other than English, including more than 6,700 with French as their first language. For more information about McGill University: https://www.mcgill.ca/

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