Merge pull request #1041 from scala/moocs-update

Add blog article about MOOCs status

Author: julienrf

blog/_posts/2019-05-21-news-from-the-scala-moocs.md

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+layout: blog-detail
+post-type: blog
+by: Julien Richard-Foy
+title: "News from the Scala MOOCs"
+---
+
+In this article, I want to share with you the current state of our online Scala courses (MOOCs) and introduce our plans
+for the future.
+
+## How it all started
+
+We stepped into the world of MOOCs with the **Functional Programming Principles in Scala** course. It was launched
+in 2012 and was a success, with more than 100,000 participants in the first two years, and a notably high completion
+rate ([Miller *et. al.*](https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/190022/))!
+
+We believe that we were able to manage this load of learners because our assignments grading system was an automated
+process: when a learner submitted his/her work, our grading infrastructure analyzed the submission’s source code, ran
+the tests and produced detailed feedback for each observed error. In addition to this automated infrastructure, our
+team of (human!) teaching assistants was present on the discussion forums to answer other requests.
+
+Encouraged by this success, one year later we launched our second course: Principles of Reactive Programming.
+
+## Where we are
+
+We currently have 6 running courses, ranging from the basics of the language to more specific programming techniques:
+- [Functional Programming Principles in Scala](https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1) (Martin Odersky): still our
+  most popular course, introduces both the Scala language and the functional programming paradigm,
+- [Functional Program Design](https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun2) (Martin Odersky): shows how to apply functional
+  programming techniques to design large applications,
+- [Parallel Programming](https://www.coursera.org/learn/parprog1) (Viktor Kuncak, Aleksandar Prokopec): teaches
+  programming techniques for leveraging multicore machines,
+- [Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark](https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala-spark-big-data) (Heather Miller):
+  teaches how to process datasets that don’t fit into the computer’s memory,
+- [Scala Specialization Capstone Project](https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala-capstone/) (Julien Richard-Foy): the
+  four previous courses are grouped in a [specialization](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/scala), and this
+  course invites students to apply the previously learned skills by implementing a large project,
+- [Programming Reactive Systems](https://www.edx.org/course/programming-reactive-systems) (Roland Kuhn, Konrad
+  Malawski, Julien Richard-Foy, Martin Odersky): teaches programming techniques for implementing scalable, resilient,
+  and responsive systems.
+
+In practice, we are able to deploy our grading infrastructure on both the [Open edX](https://open.edx.org/) and the
+[Coursera](https://www.coursera.org) platforms. The benefits are twofold: we can test and improve our next courses
+internally at EPFL on [an Open edX based platform](https://courseware.epfl.ch/) before making them public, and we
+believe that by having more freedom on where we eventually publish our courses ([edX](https://www.edx.org/) or
+[Coursera](https://www.coursera.org)) you will be more likely to get the best online learning experience.
+
+The content of our courses is available for free. In addition, a paid version allows you to receive a grade for the whole
+course as well as a certificate of completion. Statistics revealed that this paid version is mostly used by companies
+to train their employees. The MOOCs revenues allow us to pay one engineer (myself) and a team of teaching assistants.
+
+## What we plan to do
+
+Our goal is to **ease the adoption of Scala** and, beyond the language, to turn new, **innovative**, programming
+techniques into **familiar** practices.
+
+We will keep making our material accessible for free and we will continue selling certificates of completion to
+sustain our activity.
+
+More concretely, the next steps in our roadmap are the following:
+- teach more advanced concepts (implicits, path-dependent types, etc.),
+- give ready-to-use recipes for common programming tasks (manipulate files, perform HTTP requests, etc.),
+- update the material to recent Scala versions and Dotty.
+
+And you, what would be your expectations for our next MOOCs? Please share your thoughts on the
+following [discussion thread](https://users.scala-lang.org/t/what-s-up-with-the-scala-moocs-request-for-feedback/4557).