MicroMasters
series of online graduate level courses offered by universities
MicroMasters programs are a series of online graduate level courses offered by universities through edX that one can take to develop standalone skills for career advancement or earn graduate level credentials.
First launched in September 2016 with 19 MicroMasters programs from 14 different universities as an extension of its MOOC programs. As of February 2019, 52 different MicroMasters programs are offered, with 48 in English, 3 in Spanish, and 1 in French. Each MicroMasters program is sponsored by at least one industry partner, including GE, Microsoft, IBM, Hootsuite, Fidelity, Bloomberg, Walmart, PWC, Booz-Allen Hamilton, and Ford.
Background
History
The development of the MicroMasters was originally conceived at MIT by Sanjay Sarma and Erdin Beshimov, with Erdin becoming the Founding Director of the program. In its early stage MIT offered the MicroMasters as a pilot within its supply chain management program, consulting industry leaders. The idea of the MicroMasters program started out as an iteration of the existing MOOC model when Coursera first started offering specializations for its various disciplines and a response to the changing nature of work as well as the major skills shortage impacting businesses around the world. edX subsequently applied for a trademark for "MicroMasters" in response to Udacity registering "nanodegree" as its trademark in 2014. The first 19 MicroMasters programs were subsequently launched in September 2016, in collaboration with 14 different universities. This also included Rochester Institute of Technology's MicroMasters in project management, allowing learners to use it to fulfil the prerequisite of project management education for the PMP certification.
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This entry incorporates text from “MicroMasters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.