For decades, the World Economic Forum has enabled leaders in business, policy and academia to meet and learn from one another at events held in Davos, Switzerland and many other locations around the world. These gatherings have provided the setting for an exchange of ideas that have helped set the direction for solutions to critical global problems.
Now, with the creation of Forum Academy, the World Economic Forum (WEF) will provide a much wider audience with the opportunity to participate in a discussion addressing global, regional and industry challenges through courses created using the cutting-edge platform and tools innovated by edX.
Over the past year, the colleges and universities of the xConsortium have seen first-hand the global hunger for education as nearly 1.8 million students have come to edX to sign up for rigorous, massive open online courses (MOOCs). Similarly, the Forum Academy is poised to satisfy the need for up-to-date strategic knowledge demanded by professionals who need to keep abreast of fast-changing landscapes across regions and business sectors.
These courses, like those on edX, will allow current and future leaders to access the knowledge of a dynamic, global network of experts normally only available to a select few. For instance, those who enroll in the first Forum Academy course, “Global Technology Leadership”, will learn from such leaders as Justine Cassell, the Charles M. Geschke Director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University; Andrew D. Maynard, Director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan; and Tom Preston-Werner, CEO and Co-Founder of GitHub.
These and other experts will provide an overview of key emerging technologies reshaping the social, political and economic landscapes. Those taking “Global Technology Leadership” will learn how to avoid reacting to technological change and instead include these disruptive technological shifts into decision-making. Additional courses coming in 2014 include “Automotive Industry Leadership” and “New Vision for Agriculture”.
The courses provided by the Forum Academy align perfectly with those of our xConsortium partners and the many corporations and nonprofits that have been adopting the edX platform to increase access to education and solve global problems. We are pleased to welcome the World Economic Forum and the Forum Academy to the edX family.
