Chapter 1. Getting Started

Curiosity is the engine of achievement.

According to Sir Ken Robinson—a leader in creativity, innovation, and human resource development—curiosity drives our desire to acquire knowledge. This educational exploration leads us to a deeper understanding of human creativity and intelligence.

Whether you are teaching in a traditional classroom or online in a learning management system, as an educator, it's your task to cultivate your students' curiosity. As education has evolved into an increasingly interactive experience, new online options have emerged to facilitate this function.

One emerging option is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, a MOOC is "a course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people." A nonprofit partnership between Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), edX is a MOOC platform designed to engage your students' curiosity while activating the engine of their achievement.

Here is a screenshot of the edX home page, which you can find at http://edx.org:

This book walks you through the steps to create your first course with edX. By the time you finish this book, you should be able to develop or adapt the curriculum, produce instructional videos, design exercises and assessments, administer your course, and facilitate your students' learning experience while marketing it on social media.

Organized sequentially, each chapter represents a progressive step in the curriculum development and implementation process. To get started, we will cover the following topics in this first chapter: