IIT Bombay signs MoU with MIT & Harvard and edX to offer MOOCs

India-U.S. Higher Education Dialogue-2013 was convened on 25th June, 2013 at New Delhi. The Dialogue was Co-Chaired by Minister of Human Resource Development, Dr. M.M. PallamRaju and U.S. Secretary of State Mr. John F. Kerry.

During the dialogue, IIT Bombay entered into an MoU with edX - a massive open online course platform founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer free online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide audience.

IIT-B today said it has entered into a partnership with edX, a not-for-profit company set up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard to launch Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). IIT-B thus joins a consortium of top global universities.

"Collaboration with edX, and with partner universities, will help us better understand and solve issues in scaling up quality education using technology. Enhancements to the open source edX platform will now add to key areas of our research focus. This will enable technology to be deployed in other areas of education, such as vocational training, school education, and faculty empowerment," the institute said.

The deliberations in the Dialogue focused on enhancing opportunities for student/scholar mobility and collaboration, Community Colleges and Technology Enabled Learning and Massive open On-Line Courses (MOOCs) during the working sessions Co-Chaired by Mr. Ashok Thakur, Secretary, Higher Education and U.S. Under Secretary of State Ms. Tara Sonenshine.Ways for working together and collaborations were discussed for maximum leveraging of resources, competence and knowledge.

IIT Bombay also joins hands with some of the best colleges and universities across the globe such as Berkeley, Australian National University, McGill, Cornell University, University of Honk Kong, Kyoto University, Boston University.

Six students from U.S. and India who are beneficiaries of Passport to India and Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship Programmes also shared their experiences.