EdX in talks with Mideast schools to host Arabic-language courses



EdX, a United States-based online education platform, is in talks with several educational institutions in the UAE and the Middle East to host Arabic-language courses.

The courses of the non-profit website, founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May last year, are freely available online.

“There are a lot of students taking courses on our platform already in this region, so there’s a lot of interest in translating our platform and being able to offer courses in Arabic,” said Anant Agarwal, the chief executive of edX.

Mr Agarwal said an announcement was likely within the next six months, but he declined to say which institutions were likely to participate.

EdX offers 85 online courses from 29 universities on an open source platform that can be hosted by other organisations.

Since its launch, about 1.5 million students from nearly every country have enrolled in edX’s courses, according to Mr Agarwal. He said it planned to offer 1,000 courses over the next three years.

On October 3, edX said the French ministry of higher education would use its platform to launch a national massive open online course (Mooc) and blended learning portal for French-speaking students.

A week later, the foundation said a consortium of Chinese universities had selected its platform to power the country’s largest online learning portal XuetangX.

The adoption of technology by educational institutions had until recently lagged behind their counterparts in other sectors such as media, said Mr Agarwal.

“Textbooks were the last major innovation in the realm of education, but since then not much has happened,” he said. “If you look at media, the delivery of news is nothing like it was 40 years ago. But until recently the delivery of education was nearly identical to what it had been 40 or 100 years ago.”

Educational institutions in the Middle East had a lot to gain by integrating online courses into their curricula, said Mr Agarwal.

“Whether it’s at university level or secondary level, it will really be transformative. Those that are able to adopt it quickly can really get a leg up on those that don’t move fast enough,” he said.

Far from being a threat to traditional universities, online course material could be integrated within existing programmes to improve results, he added.

“It’s not going to displace campus any time soon, there’s a magic on campus. But we’re working with the campuses to augment their learning offering, to make it even better,” he said.

The introduction of online materials via edX at the San Jose State University in California resulted in the pass rate in one course rising to 90 per cent from a previous level of about 60 per cent.

“Using such a blended model, universities can cater to a millennial generation of students that wants to learn in a more flexible and interactive manner,” Mr Agarwal said.

The university lecture hall would eventually become a thing of the past, he said, with students of the future watching lectures almost exclusively online and in their own time.

“Students want to be flexible, they want to do things according to their own schedule. They don’t want to come in to a lecture hall at a set time and sit there for 50 minutes.”

jeverington@thenational.ae

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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
Number of employees: 4
COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Bidzi

● Started: 2024

● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid

● Based: Dubai, UAE

● Industry: M&A

● Funding size: Bootstrapped

● No of employees: Nine

UPI facts

More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions

Singham Again

Director: Rohit Shetty

Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone

Rating: 3/5

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
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Name: Salem Alkarbi

Age: 32

Favourite Al Wasl player: Alexandre Oliveira

First started supporting Al Wasl: 7

Biggest rival: Al Nasr

Ain Dubai in numbers

126: The length in metres of the legs supporting the structure

1 football pitch: The length of each permanent spoke is longer than a professional soccer pitch

16 A380 Airbuses: The equivalent weight of the wheel rim.

9,000 tonnes: The amount of steel used to construct the project.

5 tonnes: The weight of each permanent spoke that is holding the wheel rim in place

192: The amount of cable wires used to create the wheel. They measure a distance of 2,4000km in total, the equivalent of the distance between Dubai and Cairo.

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets

Electoral College Victory

Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate. 

 

Popular Vote Tally

The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.

The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
Edited by Sahm Venter
Published by Liveright

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Producer: Maddock Films, Jio Movies
Director: Amar Kaushik
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee
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Why it pays to compare

A comparison of sending Dh20,000 from the UAE using two different routes at the same time - the first direct from a UAE bank to a bank in Germany, and the second from the same UAE bank via an online platform to Germany - found key differences in cost and speed. The transfers were both initiated on January 30.

Route 1: bank transfer

The UAE bank charged Dh152.25 for the Dh20,000 transfer. On top of that, their exchange rate margin added a difference of around Dh415, compared with the mid-market rate.

Total cost: Dh567.25 - around 2.9 per cent of the total amount

Total received: €4,670.30 

Route 2: online platform

The UAE bank’s charge for sending Dh20,000 to a UK dirham-denominated account was Dh2.10. The exchange rate margin cost was Dh60, plus a Dh12 fee.

Total cost: Dh74.10, around 0.4 per cent of the transaction

Total received: €4,756

The UAE bank transfer was far quicker – around two to three working days, while the online platform took around four to five days, but was considerably cheaper. In the online platform transfer, the funds were also exposed to currency risk during the period it took for them to arrive.

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Name: Qyubic
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Power: 154bhp

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