edX Verified Courses Available to the Dartmouth Community

Over the past few months, many members of the Dartmouth community have had their life and professional plans upended. For some, this might mean using this time to learn something new and DartmouthX's membership in an online learning program is a great opportunity to do so.

Dartmouth has produced Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) on the nonprofit online learning consortium edX since 2015 and in light of the current health crisis has joined the Remote Access Program (RAP) with over 60 edX partners including Harvard University, Cornell University, MIT, and institutions around the world. Through RAP, members of the Dartmouth community can get three codes for MOOCs at no cost to the learner or the College. These classes are typically free to audit, but the codes allow learners to enroll in the 'verified track' which gives them access to all course material, graded assessments, and a verified certificate. The verified track does not give college credit, but can serve as valuable professional development. 

Michael Goudzwaard, DCAL's Associate Director of Learning Innovation, has worked on the DartmouthX project since the beginning in 2014. "In the rapid shift to remote teaching and learning in March, we wanted to have every possible resource available to our community. We also knew that there was a radical shift happening across all educational institutions and wanted to offer our DartmouthX courses and programs to our partners and their communities to keep teaching and learning this spring."

RAP courses include Cornell's Teaching & Learning in the Diverse Classroom, Imperial College London's Coaching Skills for Learner-Centred Conversations, UC Berkeley's the Science of Happiness, and over a hundred others. Members of the Dartmouth community, including faculty, staff, and alumni have already enrolled in more than 450 courses to date in topics from data science, sustainability, intercultural competence, leadership, and computer programming. 

Learners also have access to Dartmouth's wide variety of MOOCS including Introduction to German Opera with Jacob H. Strauss 1922 Professor of Music Steve Swayne, Question Reality! Science, philosophy, and the search for meaning with Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy Marcelo Gleiser, and Professional Certificate program in C Programming with Linux co-taught by Dartmouth engineering professor Petra Bonfert-Taylor and Rémi Sharrock from Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) of France which won the 2019 edX Prize for Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning.

Goudzwaard recommends that learners invite colleagues, friends or family members to take the course along with them. "Learners who have a study and/or accountability group are more likely to complete the course. We hope that teams and groups will also come together in learning communities to pursue common interests and professional topics." 

Dartmouth community members (NetID login required) can request codes at dartgo.org/edx_code_request and must enroll in those courses by June 30, 2020, however can continue their learning as long as the chosen course is open.