Edraak is a non-profit massive open online course (MOOC) portal established by Queen Rania al Abdallah of Jordan for the promotion of knowledge in the Arab world. [1] It is considered the first non-profit and pan-Arab online educational platform that offers courses for free to learners worldwide. [2] The MOOC platform operates in partnership with the Harvard-Stanford-MIT consortium called edX and is headquartered in Amman. [3]
On May November 2013, the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development (QRF) [4] launched Edraak. According to Queen Rania, Edraak was introduced for the Arab world to catch up to a future that befits its history. [2] It is also stated that Edraak could help address problems that hinder the development of the Middle East and the Arab youth since it addresses the issues of risk-taking, effective partnerships, and the efficient use of knowledge, among others. [5]
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is Rania's co-founder. Patrons and partners include Princess Sumaya University for Technology, the Mikati foundation, Arab Fund, the British Council, the American University of Beirut, Bayt, and the institutions behind edX. [6]
Edraak uses the open-source edX platform by edX, which also used by two global MOOC providers: XuetangX in China [7] and the French Université Numérique.
Edraak has collaborated with several regional and international scholars from prestigious universities to design and deliver courses covering a number of disciplines such as entrepreneurship, communication, health, information technology, design, and filmmaking. [3] Courses typically ran between 3 – 8 weeks. Among the pioneers that joined forces with QRF was the American University of Beirut that contributed two courses. [8]
Courses from QRF are offered primarily in Arabic, but translations of courses from prestigious universities like Harvard and MIT are also available. At its launch, Edraak offered 10 courses.
Edraak is also seen as an employee training and recruitment platform for companies in the region. [9] The varied nature of the online courses provides companies the opportunity to upgrade employee skills as workplace demands continuously increases. Through removing the language barriers and making knowledge accessible, Edraak may contribute to decreasing Arab's lagging behind the western world in education in knowledge and digital fluency. [10]
Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via mail. Distance education is a technology-mediated modality and has evolved with the evolution of technologies such as video conferencing, TV, and the Internet. Today, it usually involves online education and the learning is usually mediated by some form of technology. A distance learning program can either be completely a remote learning, or a combination of both online learning and traditional offline classroom instruction. Other modalities include distance learning with complementary virtual environment or teaching in virtual environment (e-learning).
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to publish all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, freely and openly available to anyone, anywhere. The project was announced on April 4, 2001, and uses Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The program was originally funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT. MIT OpenCourseWare is supported by MIT, corporate underwriting, major gifts, and donations from site visitors. The initiative inspired a number of other institutions to make their course materials available as open educational resources.
Rania Al Abdullah is Queen of Jordan.
Idit R. Harel is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and CEO of Globaloria. She is a learning sciences researcher and pioneer of Constructionist learning-based EdTech interventions.
OpenCourseWare (OCW) are course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. OCW projects first appeared in the late 1990s, and after gaining traction in Europe and then the United States have become a worldwide means of delivering educational content.
A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".
edX is an American for-profit online education platform owned by 2U since 2021. The platform's main focus is to manage a variety of offerings, including elite brand bootcamps.
MITx is the massive open online course (MOOC) program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A constituent program of MIT's Office of Digital Learning, MITx produces MOOCs from MIT departments and faculty. Prior to 2U's acquisition of edX, MITx courses appeared there. After the acquisition, courses appeared on MIT's own site. MITx also supports residential experiments with scalable learning technologies and research on digital learning. MOOCs offered through edX by MITx are open-enrollment and free to take. In September 2012, edX and MITx introduced the option to receive an ID verified certificate on some courses.
2U, Inc. is an American educational technology company that contracts with non-profit colleges and universities to build, deliver and support online degree and non-degree programs. It is also the parent company of edX.On February 12, 2024, 2U announced "there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."
FutureLearn is a British digital education platform founded in December 2012. The company was acquired by Global University Systems in December 2022 and previously jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It is a massive open online course (MOOC), microcredential and degree learning platform.
Iversity is a Berlin-based online education platform. Since October 2013, iversity has specialised in providing online courses and lectures in higher education, specifically MOOCs. Courses are free and open for anyone to enroll and participate. Many of them are conducted in English or German, but also in other languages. iversity cooperates with individual professors as well as different European universities. Some of the courses were winners of the MOOC Production Fellowship held in early 2013. iversity.org officially launched the MOOC platform online in October 2013 and as of February 2015 has a user base of 600,000 online learners, enrolled in 63 courses offered by 41 partner universities. iversity is the only MOOC platform offering courses with ECTS-integration. iversity has branch offices in Bernau bei Berlin, Germany and Berlin.
In higher education a microdegree, also microcredentials and micromasters, is a qualification focused upon a specified professional or career discipline and typically comprises one or more sources of accelerated educational experiences. Microdegrees are a single manifestation of Competency Based Education (CBE) which seeks to tie credentialing to specific skills sets. Micro-credentials may be completed on-site, online or in a blended format.
INJAZ Al-Arab is a non-profit organization for education and training in workforce readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship across the Arab World. INJAZ Al-Arab is the Regional Operating Center of JA Worldwide (JAW), one of the largest global non-governmental organizations dedicated to addressing fundamental social and economic challenges faced by young people. INJAZ Al-Arab is also an active participant in the United Nations Global Compact. Over 5 million students have participated in a broad base of entrepreneurship training opportunities aimed at developing basic business skills to start and run their own businesses while obtaining soft skills increasingly demanded by the private sector. Since its inception, INJAZ Al-Arab has built a network of over 100,000 classroom volunteers, who are leaders from the corporate world. INJAZ Al-Arab has a Regional Board of Directors, which comprises 24 executives that manage some companies and institutions, as well as a team of staff, led by Akef Aqrabawi, President and CEO of the Middle East/North Africa for JA Worldwide.
kadenze.com, operated by Kadenze, Inc. ("Kadenze"), is a for-profit provider of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). The company specifically focuses on courses related to art, music, and creative technology. In comparison to other providers within the MOOC space, Kadenze provides courses in areas that are less popular than other fields such as computer science.
Online learning involves courses offered by primary institutions that are 100% virtual. Online learning, or virtual classes offered over the internet, is contrasted with traditional courses taken in a brick-and-mortar school building. It is a development in distance education that expanded in the 1990s with the spread of the commercial Internet and the World Wide Web. The learner experience is typically asynchronous but may also incorporate synchronous elements. The vast majority of institutions utilize a learning management system for the administration of online courses. As theories of distance education evolve, digital technologies to support learning and pedagogy continue to transform as well.
Language MOOCs are web-based online courses freely accessible for a limited period of time, created for those interested in developing their skills in a foreign language. As Sokolik (2014) states, enrolment is large, free and not restricted to students by age or geographic location. They have to follow the format of a course, i.e., include a syllabus and schedule and offer the guidance of one or several instructors. The MOOCs are not so new, since courses with such characteristics had been available online for quite a lot of time before Dave Cormier coined the term 'MOOC' in 2008. Furthermore, MOOCs are generally regarded as the natural evolution of OERs, which are freely accessible materials used in Education for teaching, learning and assessment.
Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) is a Master of Science degree offered by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. The program was launched in 2014 in partnership with Udacity and AT&T and delivered through the massive open online course (MOOC) format. Georgia Tech has received attention for offering an online master's degree program for under $7,000 that gives students from all over the world the opportunity to enroll in a top 10-ranked computer science program. The program has been recognized by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Fast Company, and the Reimagine Education Awards for excellence and innovation.
MicroMasters programs are a series of online graduate level courses offered by universities through edX that one can take to develop standalone skills for career advancement or earn graduate level credentials.
MIT Open Learning is an Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organization, headed by Sanjay Sarma, that oversees several MIT educational initiatives, such as MIT Open CourseWare, MITx, MicroMasters, MIT Bootcamps and others.
XuetangX is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform. It offers online courses in multiple disciplines and also certificate and degree programs. Launched on October 10, 2013, as the first Chinese MOOC platform, XuetangX was initiated by Tsinghua University and MOE Research Center for Online Education.