Spanish groups Telefonica Y Santander Bank have presented in Rio de Janeiro a global higher education platform, which will offer free online courses in Portuguese and Spanish. The act took place during the III International Meeting of University Rectors, which summons more than 1,100 universities from 31 countries in Rio de Janeiro. The platform is called Myriad X and for more than a year he has offered courses as pilot experience in 33 universities in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Puerto Rico.
Since its creation in January 2013, 745,000 students have enrolled in Miríada X, of which 105,577 have completed the courses, which are magnificent numbers compared to similar initiatives. The platform includes a community of 990 teachers. The challenge is to extend the platform to the educational centers that are part of University, a network sponsored by Banco Santander and that includes 1,216 higher education institutions from 23 Latin American countries with 14 million students. MiríadaX courses are open to all audiences, without needing to belong to a specific university and without the requirement to undergo previous entrance exams. Upon passing the courses, the universities that teach them issue degrees to the students.
The project is an answer, although with Spanish as a differential factor, to Coursera. And is that Miríada X is supported on four pillars: Telefonica with its learning platform, University which maintains a privileged relationship with 1,300 universities in Latin America and Spain and the university professors who collaborate by launching and managing courses for students.
Myriad X is the largest platform in Spanish and Portuguese of massive and open online courses (MOOCs), an educational modality that has as its characteristic offer classes online, for free and without restricting access.
In Miríada X there are 153 published courses and they will not stop growing, online education is the future of 21st century education, although much remains to be resolved as the low completion rate of the courses and that in Miríada X is 20%, the validity of the title, the recognition of the companies to these titles and the business model to support the platform. In any case, it is a way of learning that our children will have to face and which they will probably adapt perfectly because they are already learning with similar platforms at school or outside it.
