IIM Bangalore in collaboration with edX which is an online platform for learning, developed by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has launched a series of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). These had joined hands in August last year and had said that the courses will be made available to the public within a year.

According to a press statement given by Anant Agarwal, CEO, edX, the Indian market is an extremely important one for edX as it is home to a large population of learners on edX outside the USA.

IIM Bangalore has chosen to launch their courses on this platform.

This partnership will help to expand edX not just in India but across the globe.

He further stated that the Indian market accounted for 12% of its global user base. According to Agarwal, nearly 2.5 lakh people from India have enrolled for courses on edX platform. This clearly shows that MOOCs have gained a momentum in India and a growing number of students as well as professionals looking to further their skills are turning to this medium of study.

The main aim of MOOC is to secure unlimited participation from learners and to have an open access to it via the web. Apart from the traditional course material such as readings, lectures and problem sets, MOCs also provide interactive forums to students so that they can have regular interaction with professors as well teaching assistants. Interaction between students and professors is encouraged as it helps to understand the topic better and students are able to settle any queries regarding the subject.

Coined as IIMBx, Innovation and IT Management is the first course that will be offered via this program. This will be a 6 week course beginning in July 2015. Around the same time, another course will be introduced, that of Statistics for Business which is a 5 week course. Another course to be offered is the Introduction to Operations Management which is a 7 weeks course. Course takers also have the option of getting a Verified Certificate of Achievement upon payment of Rs. 1500.

IIM B is the first business school in India to have joined hands with edX to provide education to the masses via the World Wide Web.

At present, edX claims to offer more than 500 courses in different study areas, right from arts, humanities and public health to mathematics, law and computer science.

There are more than 70 partner institutions and the faculty and staff from these partner institutes teaches on the learning platform. Until now, over 400,00 certificates have been issued by edX to students taking their web based courses.

The collaboration of IIM B and edX will prove to be a successful one since edX already sees a huge turnout of students from India.

IIM B with its reputation will help to attract more students to this platform and many more will be able to benefit from IIM B’s courses which are otherwise considered as extremely prestigious and top notch.