UC Berkeley to offer free online classes through edX

The University of California, Berkeley announced last week that it is joining the new online education website founded by Harvard and MIT that offers free, not-for-credit courses to a worldwide audience, writes Larry Gordon for Los Angeles Times.

The addition of Berkeley, said officials, will give edX its first expansion into a prestigious public university and a foothold on the West Coast away from its Cambridge, Massachusetts, base. UC Berkeley will offer two courses, one in software engineering and the other in artificial intelligence, on the edX platform in the autumn.

Those classes will closely follow the on-campus versions, although without the personal contact with professors and the in-depth research projects that students usually do, professors said. Five other courses will be offered by Harvard University and MIT in such topics as solid state chemistry and computer science.
Full report on the Los Angeles Times site