edX Welcomes 'The University of Microsoft' Into Its Fold

theodp writes: "At edX," explains the upscale MOOC founded by MIT and Harvard, "we believe in offering the highest quality courses, created by schools and partners who share our commitment to excellence in teaching and learning, both online and in the classroom." You know, like Building Cloud Apps with Microsoft Azure (course trailer). On Tuesday, edX welcomed Microsoft as its first corporate member to offer MOOCs on edX.org. "Through this program," said edX, "Microsoft will offer the edX global learning community courses to acquire the core development skills needed to be successful in the cloud-first, mobile-first world." The new initiative, explained Microsoft, expands upon an existing Microsoft partnership with edX to create interactive online courses using Office Mix and PowerPoint 2013. Classes start March 31st.

Comments

This is good

[supertrooper]

I know almost everyone here will totally dis this news and make fun of it. Whatever. I welcome free education for those who can't afford it. I was lucky enough to get university education, but not everyone is that lucky. Even if 20 people learn something from these Microsoft courses, and it helps them land better jobs, I will be happy.

Re:This is good

[cb88]

The question is does this partnership hinge on the exclusion of better solutions and technologies... If not who cares if it does then we have a problem.

Re:This is good

[goarilla]

Yes, as edX notes, this is an anomaly, but it isn't really clear to me what prompted the decision

Money !

Re:This is good

[Half-pint HAL]

I know almost everyone here will totally dis this news and make fun of it. Whatever. I welcome free education for those who can't afford it. I was lucky enough to get university education, but not everyone is that lucky. Even if 20 people learn something from these Microsoft courses, and it helps them land better jobs, I will be happy.

It's a vendor-specific training course for a vendor-specific development/operational environment. Over the course of history, many enlightened salespeople have understood that free training courses (note: free "training courses", not free "education") improve brand awareness and market share. On the flipside, if you have a popular product anyway, you can make a lot of money by selling official training materials.

Microsoft are losing ground to Google, Amazon Web Services etc in the cloud computing market, so they've decided a free course is the best way to get people using their product. And they picked as their provider a company that has a list of many thousands of students, but who are themselves playing second fiddle to their competitors -- ie. Coursera and Udacity.

I do not believe in the corporate sponsorship of education. A teacher cannot be a billboard.

Re:This is good

[mean pun]

It's a vendor-specific training course for a vendor-specific development/operational environment. Over the course of history, many enlightened salespeople have understood that free training courses (note: free "training courses", not free "education") improve brand awareness and market share.

I fail to see the problem. Of course Microsoft gets something out of this deal. So? Brand awareness and market share are just as important for many of the academic partners,why do you think they are offering these MOOC courses?

Every edX course has to be evaluated on its own merits anyway. What is wrong with Microsoft offering a C# language course next to Java and Python courses from other sources?

And they picked as their provider a company that has a list of many thousands of students, but who are themselves playing second fiddle to their competitors -- ie. Coursera and Udacity.

You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but I rate edX much higher than Coursera and Udacity. Better platform, and generally much better courses. And Udacity is in practice not free.

I do not believe in the corporate sponsorship of education. A teacher cannot be a billboard.

Then you're also in favour of demolishing the William Gates building at several universities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... I suppose? Purity is very nice, but in the real world some compromises are necessary now and then.

Ballmer is slated to teach

[jpellino]

jumping jacks 101.

Re:Sure-and just how will you view this?

[dave562]

If a person is living an area of the world that lacks the bandwidth to view online videos, are they really the kind of person who will be accessing content about how to build and deploy multi-tier applications into a IaaS stack?