Communications - December 2012

online students from 152 countries
signed up for the course, and we gave
out 7,200 certificates. Over 300 stu-
dents scored a 100.”
In addition to MIT and Harvard’s
contributions, Agarwal is hoping to
raise money from various founda-
tions and philanthropies, while hav-
ing similar thoughts to Coursera
about the possibility of charging for
placement services and/or for com-
pletion certificates.

“The question has arisen regarding
the usefulness of such certificates,”
says Agarwal. “We have talked to a
number of potential employers and
have anecdotal information that, if a
student applies for a job and has an
edX certificate with a good grade, em-
ployers will value the certificate and
will count it in the assessment of the
job candidate. I mean, MITx and Har-
vardX courses will be taught by the
same professors who teach the on-
campus classes, they won’t be watered
down, and will be MIT- and Harvard-
difficult to pass. Why shouldn’t the
certificates carry value?”
Connexions, one of the very first
open-education projects which began
in 1999, is unlike Coursera and edX

edX is an open
source platform
for universities
worldwide that
wish to offer
courses online.

in that its goal is not to offer courses but to build open source textbooks. Based at Rice University, the nonprofit platform enables authors to write textbooks that students can access free of charge. Funding comes from a number of philanthropies, including Rice and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

“We currently have millions of users per month and our science, technology, engineering, and math content has been used about 100 million times in the last five years,” says Rice’s Baraniuk, who is both Connexions’ founder and director.

Baraniuk marvels at the number of disruptive education models that have sprung up in just the last few months, but won’t try to predict which will be the dominant model.

“All the models are extremely dis-
ruptive and are completely at odds
with today’s status quo,” he says.
“Which is why they are all so exciting.
There’s no question that the world of
education is going to be fundamen-
tally changed within the next 5–10
years. I’m convinced of that. I would
also predict that the big incumbents
are either going to have to transform
their institutions or they’re going to
be rendered irrelevant. The great op-
portunity here is that we’re going to
be able to provide everyone—no mat-
ter where they are, whether they have
money or no money—the ability to be
able to learn and advance themselves
in their lives and their careers.”

PC Sales Decline, Laptops Evolve

sales of personal computers dropped significantly in the third quarter of 2012, but analysts say the decline reflects an evolution in personal electronics, not the demise of the pc.

“i don’t think the pc is
dying,” says Mikako Kitagawa,
a principal analyst at gartner,
which reported worldwide pc
sales down 8.3% to 87. 5 million
machines, compared to the
same quarter last year. analyst
firm idc estimated the quarterly
drop at 8.6%, and isuppli says
total sales for the year will be
down 1.2%, the first annual
decline since the dotcom bust
of 2001.

might once have spent for a new
pc to a new ipad or data plan
instead.
craig stice, senior principal
analyst for the compute
platform at isuppli, says
consumers with disposable
income now ask, “do i need a
new pc or do i just want it? and
if i don’t need a new pc, there’s
a lot of things out there that
might catch my attention.”
about half of the purchasers
of pcs use them for business,
producing spreadsheets,
documents, powerpoint
presentations, tasks that are ill
suited for tablets. david daoud,
research director for personal
computing at idc, thinks
people will use smartphones
for communications, tablets
for multimedia, and pcs for
productivity. Meanwhile, pcs
are changing their form. With
the arrival of Windows 8,
manufacturers are introducing
hybrid laptops in which the
screen can be detached and
used as a tablet. “i think we’re
reaching the stage where we’re
seeing the pc evolve into a
hybrid product,” daoud says.