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Stanford University will collaborate on developing the edX platform

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EdX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University announced a collaboration to advance the development of edX’s open source learning platform and provide free and open online learning tools for institutions around the world. The agreement is expected to lead to new features and functionality.

The resulting enhanced platform will be used by Stanford to support its broader online learning initiatives. At the same time, edX and its X University Consortium partners will benefit from any improvements to the platform developed through the collaboration.

As part of this announcement, edX will release the source code for its entire online learning platform on June 1, 2013.

When edX was created, one of its core principles was the decision by the founding partners to make the code base open source. To that end, on March 14 edX took the first initial steps to realizing this approach by releasing its XBlock SDK (Software Development Kit) to the general public. XBlock is the underlying architecture supporting the interactive course content found in edX courses.