Last month, I was thrilled to see edX, 2U’s global online learning platform, make Fast Company’s 2024 “Most Innovative” list—specifically for our advancements with artificial intelligence (AI) in education. Collectively, between edX and 2U, it’s our fifth time on the list and third consecutive year, so continuing to be recognized like this is an honor. But at the end of the day, accolades do not define or measure the impact of our mission. Nor do they distract us from our vision: to create a better future for all through the power of high-quality online education.

Behind our Fast Company win lies a much bigger picture of how far we’ve come in delivering the skills and tools that learners, our partners, and the workforce need to thrive in the age of AI. As generative AI rapidly reshapes the future of work—and with 97 million new AI jobs expected by 2025 and the AI market estimated to grow to $407 billion by 2027—the industry-wide benefits of our reach and scale have come into even sharper focus. 

Over the past year, we’ve rallied our partners and several teams across our business to quickly transform edX.org into a top destination for AI learning content. We’ve created AI-powered tools on edX to give learners even more ways to discover career-relevant learning pathways and access real-time support. We’ve launched robust and flexible AI reskilling and upskilling opportunities for companies seeking to attract, train, and retain their talent. And we’re leveraging AI to enhance the services we provide our partners, everything from marketing support to faculty training. 

In the following three areas, I’m eager to share our most meaningful progress—and a vision for where we’re heading with AI into the future.

Our AI Content Is Empowering Millions of Learners with In-Demand Skills, from Free to Degree

Globally, job postings seeking AI skills have increased by 48% over the last year.¹ While these skills are in high demand for application-building roles, employers increasingly seek them for traditionally less technical jobs in fields like healthcare, education, marketing, and HR. The world is feeling the pressure to keep up—no wonder there’s been a 234% YOY increase in Google searches for “AI course."²

In response, we’ve rapidly grown our diversified portfolio of online courses and programs to span AI education at every investment level, from free to degree. We did so because the data was in our favor: Searches for “AI” in 2023 increased 114% YOY on edX, making it a top five search term on our platform. Regardless of their career experience or background, professionals can now come to edX to feel empowered, stay relevant, and reap the rewards of the AI revolution.

Across all of our degree and non-degree (aka alternative credential) offerings, we’ve experienced a strong trend in AI content interest, signaling to us and our partners that now is the time to continue to develop new programs in the subject.

In our alternative credential segment:

• Enrollments in 2023 increased 54% YOY for all AI-related open courses directly available to learners on edX. And our suite of open courses on ChatGPT, including a “Try It” for prompt engineering, has garnered over 100,000 total enrollments since launch.
• Enrollments in 2023 for executive education programs designed to help business leaders address organizational changes and future-proof their careers with AI increased 424% YOY, with over 14,000 total enrollments in the last 12 months. 
• Starting with seven university partners last summer, we announced new AI boot camps designed to educate early- to mid-career professionals in practical and technical AI skills. Our AI boot camp partner roster has grown to 15, with nearly 450 enrollments to date. 
• AI has quickly become the most-requested skill set from our edX For Business customers. To meet this demand, we launched the edX AI Academy, a package of AI learning content curated to employers’ unique needs. To date, over 1,200 enterprise customers have enrolled over 90,000 of their employees in AI and machine learning courses on edX.

In our degree segment:

• After becoming the first large-scale graduate program in AI offered by a top-tier school, The University of Texas at Austin’s $10,000 online master’s degree in AI began its inaugural cohort this spring with 700 students—and already the outlook from learners and program leaders is bright.
• Additional AI programs on edX include an online AI certificate program from Columbia Engineering and an online master of science in AI from Maryville University.

Our AI Platform Enhancements Are Giving Learners a “Valuable Edge”

With edX, we’ve always been at the forefront of harnessing new technologies to put cutting-edge skills in the grasp of millions around the globe—and AI has been no exception. Last year, we used OpenAI’s API to create Xpert, the collective of AI-powered tools on edX that serves as a learner’s academic assistant, meeting their evolving needs as they explore, learn, and grow. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, from one learner sharing that “Xpert has been really helpful with explaining things that are hard to understand” to an instructor calling Xpert “a major win for students, giving them a valuable edge in their learning journey.” 

Nearly 700,000 unique users and edX.org visitors have engaged with Xpert to date. And because partners see its value for learners, over 3,000 open courses and programs on edX now incorporate Xpert as a learning assistant, including my MIT Circuits and Electronics course. Since its launch, we’ve added several Xpert features to drive even more promising outcomes.

• When we piloted our Xpert Learning Assistant in a single coding boot camp, the number of questions being asked by learners went up five-fold. Among its many benefits, this feature can field more standard queries in an automated way and escalate more complex or pressing questions to live human support. In our pilot, 85% of learners showed a preference for initially asking questions of the AI tool. 
• After swiftly rolling out the Xpert Learning Assistant to all boot camp disciplines and thousands of open courses, we’re now responding to over 7,500 questions a day through the AI tool.
• To date, we’ve incorporated Xpert Unit Summaries of text and video course content into nearly 400 open courses. Over 33,000 learners have used these summaries to reinforce their knowledge acquisition, with a 97% “thumbs up” rating from all optional feedback.
• The Xpert Explorer, which helps edX visitors navigate and answer questions about our course catalog, has been used over 164,000 times and directly led to over 11,500 enrollments.
• Nearly 300 open courses now include Google AI Translations, which can convert English transcripts of course videos into 11 languages. Over 92% of all optional feedback reflects a four or five rating out of five.

Our AI-Powered Services Are Helping Partners Maximize Reach, Efficiency, and Impact

The progress we’ve made in advancing our content, platform, and enterprise innovations is a testament to AI’s power and potential on edX—and we’re just getting started. Across our portfolio of offerings, we’re continuing to make greater use of generative AI and machine learning to enhance what we do. 

For example, our Marketing team uses AI-driven automations to improve marketing efficiency, helping maximize partners’ visibility, prioritize outreach to prospective learners, and reach the right learners for their programs. Our Placement team combines personalized, hands-on support with AI-backed matching tools to help advance placement rates, retention, and outcomes for learners in our partners’ degree programs who are required to complete an onsite placement experience to graduate.

Over on our Faculty Engagement team, we help our partners maintain the academic integrity of their programs and adapt by training their faculty on enhancements to tools that include features like AI writing detection. And our boot camp instructors show learners how to use AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot, Perplexity, and ChatGPT to help them comprehend the material and code more effectively. 

As learners’ demands for AI evolve, we’re working with our partners to map AI skills frameworks across various business functions to new courses and programs. We also aim to build pathways through our AI content on edX that meet learners where they are today and guide them along their AI journey into the future.

Driving AI and Human Innovation, Together

In working toward our vision of enabling a complete lifecycle of AI learning, we ultimately recognize the importance of driving AI and human innovation in equal measure. On edX, AI won’t replace people learning from and with each other. On the contrary, we’re strategically implementing AI to ensure greater efficiencies in creating those interactions—and making them as meaningful and impactful as possible. 

With edX, we remain steadfastly committed to maximizing how technology and people can work together toward achieving great outcomes.

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Interested in partnering to create new AI learning content on edX—or use AI learning content on edX to train and develop your workforce? Connect with us!

¹ Lightcast data, January 2023 to January 2024.

² Google search demand data, March 2023 to February 2024