Skip to content ↓

Anant Agarwal named director of new unit to advance MITx

Instructor of inaugural 6.002x course will step down as CSAIL director.
Press Inquiries

Press Contact:

Kimberly Allen
Phone: 617-253-2702
Fax: 617-258-8762
MIT News Office

Media Download

Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Download Image
Caption: Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Credits: Photo: M. Scott Brauer
Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Download Image
Caption: Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Credits: Photo: M. Scott Brauer

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT."

Close
Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Caption:
Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT’s online-learning initiative, <i>MITx</i>.
Credits:
Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Professor Anant Agarwal has been named director of a new unit of MIT created to advance MIT's online-learning initiative, effective immediately, Provost L. Rafael Reif announced today in an e-mail to the MIT community.

Agarwal will soon step down as director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) to devote himself more fully to the unit with the working title Open Learning Enterprise, Reif said in his e-mail. He will continue to lead CSAIL until a successor is identified by Ian Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering.

"The development of the capabilities needed to make MITx a reality will require substantial ongoing effort," Reif said. "Professor Agarwal's initial goals are the rapid organization of the enterprise, the rapid development of a technology platform for online courses and the development of high-quality MITx subjects."

The launch of the MITx initiative was announced on Dec. 19. The initiative's prototype course — 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics, modeled after an introductory undergraduate course offered by MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science — began on March 5 and will run through June 8. The MITx course, which has enrolled more than 100,000 students, is co-taught by Agarwal.

"I am excited by the challenge of developing a new model of online learning that will enrich the education of students here on campus while making MIT accessible to millions of students around the world," said Agarwal, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. "I look forward to creating a robust, open-source technology platform to support this endeavor, and am eager to work with my colleagues on the MIT faculty to create content to be hosted on this platform."

MIT will make the open-learning software available free of cost, so that others — whether other universities or educational institutions such as K-12 school systems — can leverage the same software for their online education offerings. The Institute expects that this learning platform will enhance the experience of its on-campus students, offering online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences.

MIT also expects that MITx will eventually enable a virtual community of millions of learners around the world. MITx will be coupled with an Institute-wide research initiative into online learning that will study how students, whether on campus or part of a virtual community, learn most effectively.

Related Links

Related Topics

More MIT News