According to a popular American idiom, "home is where the heart is." The idea is that "home" is not a physical place, but a state of mind that you experience whenever you are with your loved ones—or simply wherever you want to be.

Likewise, in January 2015, the Harvard Business Review published a report that researched the impact of telecommuting versus working in a typical office. The study found that employees working at home registered an increase in performance by 13 percent while the turnover of the same group decreased by 50 percent.

There was one drawback: half of the employees working at home chose to return to the office citing loneliness as their concern. It was the intrinsically driven employees who weren't distracted by things at home. And so, while working from home has benefits, it also has drawbacks.

Students in your edX course will likely be participating from wherever home is for them. That's the beauty—and the challenge—of edX, just as it...