Among other topics, Anant discusses the following with Metis Strategy:

* The genesis of the idea behind edX

* Four aspects that make edX different from the other MOOCs

* How edX benefits both its university partners and other universities unaffiliated with edX

* edX’s KPIs

* edX’s new strategic forays in to content for Advanced Placement (AP) tests and corporate training

* Eye on the trends: Increasing focus on research at MOOC-partner universities, blended courses at universities that combine online and traditional learning

Anant Agarwal’s Biography

Anant is President of edX, a not-for-profit MOOC-based online learning destination founded by MIT and Harvard Universities.

Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works.

Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He is also the author of the textbook “Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.”

Anant holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor’s from IIT Madras.