EdX Partnership with Microsoft, Smithsonian Could Provide Professional Preparation | News | The Harvard Crimson

"In response to news that edX will collaborate to offer courses with Microsoft and the Smithsonian Institution, some higher education experts said the platform’s non-university partnerships could serve to prepare students for the workforce and provide insights into teaching within higher education. EdX, a massive open online course platform founded by Harvard and MIT in 2012, will launch seven courses on programming and cloud technologies in collaboration with Microsoft. Although Microsoft already has its own platform, Microsoft Virtual Academy, for learning content, the company’s motivation to partner with edX was partly to offer content that follows the MOOC model, according to a joint statement by Jatinder P. S. Kohli, director of product, and Björn C. Rettig, director of content at Microsoft ... In addition to Microsoft, edX also partnered with the Smithsonian Institution to launch three courses on American history—one taught by Stan Lee, former president of Marvel Comics ..."