[APPLAUSE, CHEERING]
KATIE COURIC: Welcome back, everybody.
So today, I'm such a geek, but I love the subject
we're talking about, the digital classroom and how it's
reinventing the way we're learning.
Anant Agarwal is a professor of electrical engineering and computer
science at MIT-- a real dummy-- and the CEO of the innovative online learning
destination edX.
Anant, welcome.
Thank you so much for being here.
ANANT AGARWAL: My pleasure.
Thank you.
KATIE COURIC: Nice to see you.
I know that you partnered with Harvard and MIT to create edX,
and it offers interactive online classes from top schools.
Can you explain how it works exactly?
ANANT AGARWAL: EdX.org is a online destination.
So learners can go to that destination and they
can take these great free courses from some
of the best universities in the world, like MIT, Harvard, Berkeley,
Georgetown, or Tsinghua from China, for that matter.
Our university partners create these online courses
and offer them on the edX platform, and people can come and take these
for free, from some of the best universities in the world.
KATIE COURIC: Which is fantastic.
The key two words being "for free."
And college has gotten so prohibitively expensive for many people.
And all these students are saddled with student loan debt.
This is a very appealing way to either focus solely for your education
or, as the Khan Academy does, augment the education you may
be receiving in a more traditional way.
ANANT AGARWAL: Absolutely.
For the first time, we are consistently applying technology to education,
and we have applied technology to everything else-- to sports,
to communications, to health care.
For the first time, we are applying it to something that's so important.
Education is an absolute, fundamental human right.
We are now applying it to education.
And then when people apply technology to any field,
whether it's communications or health care, many good things happen.
First of all, it becomes widely accessible.
Second, there are opportunities to make it much, much higher quality,
whether on campus or worldwide.
And finally, I think there are opportunities
to make the whole system and the quality such that it's more efficient,
so that more students graduate.
And maybe we can also reduce cost.
But I think these are experiments that we are performing
to see where we can take this.
KATIE COURIC: Plus, as the world gets flatter and flatter,
global cultural literacy is becoming increasingly important.
So as you said, from every country in the world.
So these people are from all over.
I would imagine they really range in age and in socioeconomic background.
What kinds of people are taking these courses, because I'd like to take one,
actually.
ANANT AGARWAL: You should.
It is absolutely mind boggling.
We have learners who are 8 years old to 92 years old taking our courses.
I give you a couple of quick examples.
My favorite is Kushbat.
Kushbat is a student in Peshawar in Pakistan.
So she was married early, and so because of that she could not
complete her schooling.
She had just finished ninth grade.
And now in Peshawar she writes to us saying she is taking edX courses.
She took Michael Sandel's HarvardX justice course.
And she says the husband is very supportive.
So she's at home.
She's a mother at home, and she's taking online courses.
And with a very supportive husband Pakistan,
here's a woman who can now get educated when they could not
continue their education before.
[APPLAUSE]
KATIE COURIC: That's fantastic Well, you think of that,
and you think about the kind of social change
that can be ushered in just with an education.
And some of the positive things that can be done in many of these countries
as a result of these educational opportunities.
Meanwhile, I know that there has been a lot of discussion
about online education-- not all of it positive.
It has a bad retention rate.
A lot of people sign up and they don't complete the course.
And now there's more and more discussion about having the lecture show up
online, but the actual class discussion take place
with real face-to-face connection.
So I guess online courses are not necessarily
a panacea or a replacement for more traditional learning.
ANANT AGARWAL: Oh, of course.
We've always believed that online learning
is useful not just for students who want to learn online
when they did not have access to an education in many parts of the world.
At the same time, we can bring the technology,
bring the learning back to campus and improve campus education
at the same time.
And we bring all the social into the classroom,
and rather than telling them, shut off your iPad,
leave it outside, no, bring it in.
It should be part of the teaching experience.
So on our platform we have a discussion forum where, as they watch videos,
students are discussing the content of the class with peers.
So you can see a discussion with a student from Colombia,
a learner from Pakistan, the US, India.
Can you imagine the world 10 years from now when
these kids have been discussing things with people from Syria or Pakistan
are Sudan or the USA?
And 10 years from now they will learn together.
The world's going to be a different place.
KATIE COURIC: It's really extraordinary.
And meanwhile, you can get a certificate, not a degree,
from an online course.
But I understand these certificates in some cases
are treated pretty seriously by potential employers.
ANANT AGARWAL: Absolutely.
Many of them are using them on their LinkedIn profile,
they are showing them to employers.
We have example from a student in India working
with a partner, Aspiring Minds in India, that
got a job based on a software as a service course from Berkeley
that they took on edX.
There are many examples of this now.
KATIE COURIC: Wow.
And I know that Sal was one of your students at MIT,
but when it came time for you to really kind of start pursuing
online education in a more serious way, you reached out to Sal
and he became the teacher.
ANANT AGARWAL: Oh yes, I love the way Sal Khan does videos,
and so I've given them a name.
I call them KSVs, or Khan-Style Videos.
And so when I did my circuits course, in sense I was a professor,
but he learned me good.
And so I did my videos in the KSV style, and I liked them
so much that on edX we were creating a course called
edX 101, which is of course for teachers on how to create online courses.
The first thing we did was reached out to our friend Sal
and said, "Hey Sal, can you create for me a Khan-Style video
on how to create Khan-Style video?"
And he did.
KATIE COURIC: What will he think of next?
Well, I think it's very exciting what both of you are doing,
and really game-changing, I think, all over the world in terms of education
and so many things that result from a good education.
So Anant, thank you so much.
And Sal, again, thanks to you.
And to find out more about edX and the Khan Academy, you can go to our website
at katiecouric.com.
We'll be right back.