New online learning courses from Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley

More news from the fast moving world of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): University of California at Berkeley has joined the edX consortium of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the consortium’s first roster of courses is now online.

The seven new courses are heavily weighted toward computer science. In addition to two introductory computer science courses, edX is offering two advanced computer science courses, a chemistry course, an electrical engineering course and a course in biostatistics. Sign-ups are open now, and courses begin in September and October.

• Circuits and Electronics by MIT

• Artificial Intelligence by Berkeley

• Introduction to Computer Science and Programming by MIT

• Introduction to Computer Science by Harvard

• Software as a Service by Berkeley

• Introduction to Solid State Chemistry by MIT

• Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research by Harvard 

Unlike its two largest MOOC competitors, Udacity and Coursera, edX is a not for profit initiative, which will be developing an open source software platform for delivery of online courses. Organizers said they learned a lot from MIT’s pilot course Circuits and Electronics, which went online in the spring. More than 7,000 people completed the course, creating their own study online communities, and contributing additional software to the project.

For more details, check out this article from MIT News.