Accelerating Our Movement
2021 edX Impact Report
Download the report
Welcome learners, educators and friends,
Last year, we released our first Impact Report that explored the innovative milestones that edX and our partners pioneered together, and shared our vision around transforming education. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic brought unexpected challenges, but it also opened up new opportunities for us to come together and support one another.
As online education became not just optional, but essential, edX became the movement for the moment — and we seized the chance to give our community a place to grow. With our network, we forged ahead together and brought the transformative power of education to those who needed it.
As we look back at the past year, we’re thankful for the global network of contributors who helped us support our learners in every way we could. Join me as we explore how together we united our global community of learners, addressed urgent needs in higher education, and helped businesses foster resilience and employability.
Anant Agarwal, edX Founder and CEO
A Moment to Move Forward, Together
The spread of COVID-19 across the globe impacted every one of us. But as the world rapidly changed, our commitment to our global community didn’t. Learners came to us with new and urgent needs, and we united our network to support them, stay connected, and move forward, together.
Thousands of learners, educators, and companies from around the world flocked to edX.org, and our network came together to help them keep learning. And learn they did—we welcomed 10x more new registered learners and saw a 15x increase in course enrollments.
Joseph
"I realized that the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. For me, COVID-19 restrictions turned out to be an opportunity to complete my data science studies."
Meet Joseph
May
“It was an amazing experience to learn alongside students from all over the world. The silver lining in COVID-19.”
Meet May
Asad
“I plan to use this when I graduate, so when employers ask what I have been doing during lockdown, I can confidently show that I took the initiative and broadened my knowledge.”
Meet Asad
“Everything edX and our partners have been building over the past eight years prepared us for this moment to support our students and the global education system.”
— ANANT AGARWAL, FOUNDER AND CEO OF EDX
The Turning Point for Higher Education
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COVID-19 spreads to the world
Universities were forced to shut down and transition to online learning in a matter of days.
Moving fast
The task of pivoting to fully remote teaching and learning was an insurmountable task for many on their own. With the help of edX, they united to keep their students learning.
Our rapid and united response
We launched an early version of edX Online Campus to provide edX partner institutions with free access to courses and programs.
When universities worldwide had to close their campuses, they had to be nimble and pivot to offer educational experiences online. At the start of the pandemic, edX set out to help our partner universities and learning institutions around the world address our new reality of fully remote teaching and learning—a move many had not planned for.
Our team came together to accelerate the development of a new initiative: edX Online Campus
The launch of edX Online Campus brought our vision for the future of education to life. By providing universities with a catalog of edX courses, it gave faculty, students, and staff with remote teaching and learning resources.
edX For Business: Bringing Opportunity Amidst Uncertainty
The future of work is rapidly evolving, and the pandemic expedited the need for employees to gain resilient, future-proof skills. edX For Business enables companies to offer learning pathways with real career outcomes to their employees, helping to ensure that they could come out of the pandemic stronger than before.
Leading the Way to the Future of Work
1,000+
Customers
100,000+
Employees Learning on edX
300,000+
Enrollments
Our Movement Today
Since we first opened the classroom to the world in 2012, we’ve helped millions of learners unlock their potential with the power of education. When online education became the movement for the moment in the wake of COVID-19, we seized the opportunity to help even more learners find a path forward through uncertainty. And we’re not stopping here—we’ll continue to grow our movement until every learner can access quality education.
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35M
Registered Learners
110M
Enrollments
85K
Learners engaged in course content per day
39M
Hours of Video Consumed
2.1M
Verified course certificates issued
15K
Instructors
Efi
“The benefits, the prices, the universities, and the courses that edX offers is the best online place to be right now.”
Meet Efi
Arjun
“I almost felt as if I were more a part of the [edX] classroom’s community than even some of the in-person classes I took at college”
Meet Arjun
Maureen
"I liked the flexibility to work at my own pace and as my schedule allowed. I liked being able to pause or re-play instructional videos and read the lesson’s text as well. I was pleasantly surprised that student questions were answered so quickly and thoroughly by the professors through the site."
Meet MaureenLooking Forward, Together
Everything we do is powered by a global network of contributors who believe in the transformative power of education. Together with the majority of top-ranked universities and industry-leading companies brought together onto one online learning platform, we’re furthering our mission to increase access to quality education worldwide and bring quality education to learners at every stage of their lives.
To explore more about how edX united our global community of learners, addressed urgent needs in higher education, and helped businesses foster resilience and employability, download the full 2021 edX Impact Report.