EdX is a free website that offers you Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), in various categories, like: Science, Law, Literature, Math, etc. The courses follow weekly schedule and you get regular exercises to keep you practicing. You can register for them in advance or you can even join a running course as well. EdX offers virtual classrooms, that are available for you round the clock.
The courses contain tutorials that can be video and/or written materials. You may even be suggested books for the related courses. You don’t need to buy these books as all suggested study material will be available online.
What is EdX?
EdX is an Open Source Platform, that has many world-wide famous Universities as its members, who are constantly working to raise level of education. It aims to enhance the teaching and learning online.
It’s a non-profit project. All the courses are free to take and anyone can confirm that you have actually completed the course; but if you want to go for ID verified course certificate, you’ll have to pay for that. The fee is not meant for profit but to keep this free platform for learning alive. You can complete these verified courses without paying anything but you don’t get the certificate for them. You can take print of your progress chart as proof of participation though. Another website that follows same model is Alison and that too has many good courses.
You can also try Slayor, earlier reviewed by us.
How To Use EdX?
Follow the link given at the end of this review to reach the homepage of EdX. You can browse the courses from there. But you need to register with the website first, to be able to register for the courses.
Registration
- Registration follows very simple steps. Click on “Register Now”, provide your basic details and submit. You are now eligible to take the courses.
- You can go to Dashboard to edit your details.
- There are three languages on offer: English, Français, and Hindi.
Choosing a Course
- You can click on “COURSES” on homepage to get a list of the courses. But I’ll suggest you to browse the courses by choosing category that interests you. Category list is also available on homepage.
- Click on Learn More button on any course in the list to get all the basic details about it. You’ll also get a video of course intro.
- If you find the course relevant, you can click on the Register option. You’ll land on the Dashboard.
- Dashboard will contain the list of all the courses that you have registered for.
- Option to cancel the registration is also available on the Dashboard.
Study a Course
- From Dashboard you can go to the registered courses. Click on the Course Name to open the course page.
- You’ll get four tabs: Courseware, Course Info, Discussion, and Progress.
- Course info will open by default. It is same page that you checked before registration for course.
- Courseware (check the screenshot below) contains the notes, lecture videos, problems and all other study contents available.
- Discussion tab gives you option to ask your problems or doubts. You may also respond to issues faced by other users. Link to discussion pages of that particular course on some social networking sites may also be available in this tab.
- Progress Tab informs you about the grading format.
- There could be some course specific tabs as well, depending on the course.
- During the course, you have to appear for regular exercises and a final evaluation test at the end of the course.
- A unique thing about this website is that some courses have written assignments as well (most of other online learning websites have only multiple choice questions in assignments). To review written assignments, this website follows a peer review method, which means that students appearing for the courses will have to check written assignments for each other. You don’t know whose answer you are checking, so chance of manipulation is less, I think.
- Get the grades and you can take a print of that, as a proof of participation.
Final Verdict
Faculties from top universities (member of EdX) conducts these free online courses, so you can rely on the quality. There is vast scope of learning for everyone as there are so many categories that EdX covers up. There are many courses and you can take them all for free. I tried a couple of courses and my experience on them was really wonderful.
The discussion page is not very supportive for all the courses. Some of them just provide you social networking links.
Overall, EdX is an excellent thought, that has been executed perfectly too.
