HarvardX Scholarly Articles

ER22x was offered as a HarvardX course in Spring 2013 on edX, a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). It was taught by Professor Michael Sandel. The report was prepared by researchers external to the course team, based on an examination of the courseware, analyses of data collected by the edX platform, and interviews with the course faculty and team members.

In the 2012-2013 academic year, the first two Harvard School of Public Health courses were offered through HarvardX on the edX platform: PH207x: Health in Numbers and PH278x: Human Health and Global Environmental Change. They were taught by Professors Earl Francis Cook and Marcello Pagano, and Aaron Bernstein and Jack Spengler, respectively. This report describes the structure of these two courses, the demographic characteristics of registrants, and the activity of students. This report was prepared by researchers external to the course teams and is based on examination of the courseware, analyses of the data collected by the edX platform, and interviews and consultations with the course faculty and team members.

HarvardX and MITx are collaborative institutional efforts between Harvard University and MIT to enhance campus-based education, advance educational research, and increase access to online learning opportunities worldwide. Over the year from the fall of 2012 to the summer of 2013, HarvardX and MITx launched 17 courses on edX, a jointly founded platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). In that year, 43,196 registrants earned certificates of completion. Another 35,937 registrants explored half or more of course content without certification. An additional 469,702 registrants viewed less than half of the content. And 292,852 registrants never engaged with the online content. In total, there were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users across the first year of HarvardX and MITx courses. This report is a joint effort by institutional units at Harvard and MIT to describe the registrant and course data provided by edX in the context of the diverse efforts and intentions of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams.

CB22x: The Ancient Greek Hero, was offered as a HarvardX course in Spring 2013 on edX, a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). It was taught by Professor Greg Nagy. The report was prepared by researchers external to the course team, based on examination of the courseware, analyses of the data collected by the edX platform, and interviews and consultations with the course faculty and team members.