Dive Brief:

• EdX has added a second tier of institutions, including its first non-university members, to help expand its MOOC offerings.
• The non-profit massive open online course provider preserves exclusivity for its 32 charter members by allowing fewer privileges to the new members. For example, the new members won’t have access to the same strategy conversations as original members.
• Among the 12 new members are Colgate University, Osaka University, the International Monetary Fund, and the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which alone could add hundreds of new members to edX.

Dive Insight:

Since November, and maybe earlier, edX has been considering how to grow its course offerings faster without sacrificing the exclusive atmosphere for its initial members. The MOOC provider wants to expand its course lineup so that visitors to its website don’t leave without finding the course subjects, levels, and start times that they want. The colleges say the opportunity to collaborate with their peers, and they get access to edX's data to help gauge how effective online and other types of learning are. The new members will offer their courses alongside the charter members, and they’ll have the chance to share with edX any revenue that comes from the MOOCs. The other new members are the Inter-American Development Bank, Televisión Educativa, Learning by Giving Foundation, the Linux Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, Hamilton College, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.