SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NovoEd, the collaborative online social learning platform, today announced agreements with 16 institutions that span the higher education, research, and technology sectors. Through these relationships, NovoEd will provide the platform, tools, and services that enable its partners to offer both massive online open courses (MOOCs) and smaller private courses in a social, collaborative and connected environment. With this new technology, the world is now a connected, social classroom.

NovoEd's extensive list of partners now includes Stanford, Princeton, University of Michigan, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Babson Global, the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, among others. For a full list, please visit (http://novoed.com/partners). NovoEd offers a unique learning opportunity for learners to expand their educational opportunities and tools for universities to use to improve teaching methods and learning.

"Through our partnership with NovoEd, we're scaling our highly acclaimed business and entrepreneurship courses globally to ten countries around the world," said Shahid Ansari, CEO of Babson Global, one of the top ranked business schools for Business and Entrepreneurship in the world. "With NovoEd, we're destroying geographic boundaries by offering global classrooms enriched with collaboration and connectivity."    

As NovoEd continues to grow, its focus has remained on strategic collaboration with institutions and organizations in order to connect learners and executives with the best instructors in an environment that supports interaction and connectivity. Each NovoEd partner integrates its interactive learning model into the NovoEd online social learning environment. For example, the Carnegie Foundation is testing new approaches to blended learning using social technology while the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) offered its first MOOC on retirement finance and public pensions last fall. The online course drew 44,000 users who accessed collaborative group work, online discussion, and faculty content. The MOOC featured rigorous assignments with peer grading and challenging group projects. NovoEd also is used by Stanford Ignite certificate programs in Bangalore and Paris, which teach innovators, scientists, and engineers to commercialize their ideas. 

"We are exploring new ways of offering Darden courses to the world in a way that more closely aligns with the Darden student experience we are known for," says Mike Lenox, Associate Dean for Innovation Programs at Darden School of Business and Academic Director, the Batten Institute. "From executive education to open courses, the social technology available on NovoEd allows us to thoughtfully scale our offerings at the highest levels of quality and innovation."

NovoEd enables students to connect with one another and work together on projects with real-world applications. In most courses, students create original work to fulfill their assignments. Between 35% and 65% of students who complete the first assignment in project-based MOOCs on NovoEd complete the course.

"We are excited to be collaborating with our partners to continue to innovate new models of online instruction that benefit their students," said Amin Saberi, CEO and Founder of NovoEd, who is on leave of absence from Stanford. "Together, we will continue to develop the most effective and experiential learning experiences for students."

For more information about NovoEd, visit www.NovoEd.com. To sign up for a course offered by one of NovoEd's partners, visit https://novoed.com/courses.

About NovoEd

NovoEd is a student-centered online learning platform that places collaboration and teamwork at the center of the online learning experience. Developed at Stanford University, NovoEd provides a connected, effective and engaging learning experience for students by giving them access to both world-class instructors and to other students around the world so they may work together to complete class projects. Through the use of techniques in human-computer interaction, algorithms, and social network design, NovoEd fosters online peer learning and helps students perfect their problem solving, leadership and communication skills.

SOURCE NovoEd