Free online courses through Wits

Wits University is now offering free online courses – what are you waiting for?

Wits University has officially partnered with edX, an online platform which offers free online courses and classes from the world’s best universities, in order to expand their access to more knowledge-hungry individuals in South Africa.

Professor Andrew Crouch, Wits University’s deputy vice-chancellor: academic, spoke at Senate House during the launch of the courses and explained the strategy they will implement to make education accessible to more people.

“It’s important for us, as a university, to expand our access to education,” said Crouch, who explained that the institution, which only has the infrastructure to facilitate learning to 33 000 people, would like to allow all 80 000 people interested in enrolling, the opportunity to gain access to the course of their choice.

“To partner with edX, an internationally-renowned group, means that we will immediately make courses available on an international platform and people who access it will also have access to courses from top quality institutions such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Harvard, to name a few,” said Crouch.

There are three courses known as Moocs (Massive Open Online Courses) that were of particular excitement to the team that has made this form of educational access possible.

Currently the university is offering System Dynamics for Health Sciences, a course to help students better understand complex medical issues and interventions; Research Methods: An Engineering Approach, in order to facilitate the understanding of underlying principles of postgraduate research from an engineering perspective; and Results-Based Project Management: Monitoring and Evaluation, to help design and implement programmes to optimise resources.

This is just one of three steps that the university will take to open access to various courses. The second phase of their strategy is to offer short courses, which are currently available, and the final phase is to offer full online degrees – all of which will be available in the near future.

Members from both Wits University and edX were more than excited to open up this platform to students and those wanting to acquire further education.

“We look forward to our continued work together, to deliver opportunities and great education. Congratulations on your launch,” Anant Agarwal, chief executive officer of edX, concluded.

Details: www.edx.org/schools/witsx