Stanford Makes Coursework Available On New Open-Source Platform

Stanford online coursework will be available starting this summer on a new open-source platform, OpenEdX, the university announced Tuesday.

Among the first programs to run on the OpenEdX platform will be Stanford's popular "Three Books" summer reading program for incoming Stanford freshmen, along with two public courses now open for registration – one using contemporary health topics to teach statistics and another helping K-12 teachers and parents change the way students approach math. Courses from Stanford's Department of Electrical Engineering are among those that will run on the platform beginning this fall.

In April, Stanford and edX, the nonprofit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT, announced they would collaborate on future development of the edX online platform. As part of that effort, edX has released the platform as open-source for developers around the world to use. Stanford will now use the OpenEdX platform as one of several platforms for both online course content for on-campus Stanford students and online classes available to the public.