edX is an open source learning management system (LMS) and course authoring tool launched by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a nonprofit partnership. A massively online open course (MOOC) platform, edX offers students self-paced learning, online discussion groups, Wiki-based collaborative learning, assessment of learning, online laboratories, and other interactive learning tools.
If you're an educator creating a course for edX, or a corporate trainer using Open edX to achieve learning and development initiatives, then edX E-Learning Course Development is ideal for you. Whether you're developing an online course for the first time or you are a veteran LMS scholar, this book gets you up and running with edX.
Walking you through eight essential steps for creating an edX course, each chapter signifies a step in the curriculum development and implementation process. We begin with an overview of MOOCs and the history of edX, detail curriculum development and video production best practices, and then explore exercises and assessment options. We then integrate everything, managing your edX course's administrative options while facilitating your students' learning experience. Finally, we suggest strategies to market your course using traditional tools, edX's internal options, and social media.
Chapter 1, Getting Started, introduces edX and reviews your role and responsibilities helping you to discover best practices in the process. You will be guided through the process of signing up for edX, creating a Studio account, and taking the first steps towards creating your first course.
Chapter 2, Planning the Curriculum, concerns planning your course's curriculum and understanding the elements within edX necessary for launching it.
You will learn about the edX Course Matrix, and how to prepare your course's About page, write the various preliminary documents for your course, improve your knowledge of learning sequences, design exercises and assessments, choose textbooks and materials, moderate the discussion forum, launch your course's Wiki, and finally, preview the necessary information for the certificate of mastery.
Chapter 3, Producing Videos, explores the idea and intent of instructional videos to your course, presents video production pointers, reviews post-production processes, explains the process of transcript creation, and outlines how to create playlists on YouTube for each of your courses.
Chapter 4, Designing Exercises, demonstrates how to develop exercises, discusses ways to engage students, reviews problem components, and explains interactive exercises. You will also learn about four problem types: general exercises and tools, image-based exercises and tools, multiple-choice exercises and tools, and STEM exercises and tools. A/B split tests, in conjunction with content experiments, are also explored.
Chapter 5, Integrating the Curriculum, focuses on course components where your curriculum converges, introduces integration of curriculum, and presents practices that enrich your students' learning experiences. You will also establish your course outline, define course sections, include course subsections, input course units, develop course components, add pages, upload files, post updates and handouts, upload PDF textbooks, and address accessibility issues.
Chapter 6, Administering Your Course, outlines administrative functions, best practices, and online resources that make your job easier. You will also learn how to establish a grading policy, control content visibility, include student cohorts, tackle beta testing, export and import your course, make the most of edX resources, and finally, launch your course.
Chapter 7, Facilitating Your Course, offers insight into assigning staff roles, inviting students to enroll, directing your discussions, managing your messaging, creating your course wiki, reviewing course data, supervising student data, overseeing answer data, managing the gradebook, and issuing course completion certificates.
Chapter 8, Promoting Your Course, shares strategies for marketing your edX course before it is offered, and shows you how to create networking opportunities for your students after it concludes. In this chapter, you get to tackle traditional marketing tools, identify options from edX, discuss social media marketing, explore the basics of personal branding, review marketing metrics, and define the role of student feedback.
XBlock is the SDK for the edX MOOC platform, which is written primarily in Python 2. It is a component architecture that enables developers to create independent course components—XBlocks—that will work seamlessly with other components in an online course. Course authors can combine XBlocks from various sources, including text, video, Wikis, and online laboratories.
You can access the edX open source platform technology along with platform developments from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, edX, and other contributors at openedx.org. If you plan to run Open edX, you will be pleased to know that there are hosting providers, or you can install and run the software on your own server. However, edX does not provide direct support for independent installations. If you are a developer who wants to get involved with edX, you can find its technical details at openedx.org, including documentation, source code repositories, mailing lists, and IRC channels.
If you are an educator who is creating a course for edX, or a corporate trainer using Open edX for learning and development initiatives, then edX E-Learning Course Development is the ideal book for you. Whether you are developing an online course for the first time or you are a veteran LMS scholar, this book will get you up and running with edX.
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