EdX's enrollment options

At edX, when you enroll on a course, you pick your track between two options… although there are often, in reality, three. Let's review them:

• “Audit” is the most basic. Gives you access to the courseware, the exams, etc. but you don't get a certificate of completion should you “pass” the course − what it means is, you don't feel the pressure to do exams (which can actually be detrimental to the learning process). It's free.
• “Honour code” (or “Honor” as they write it, but hey, I'm European and half-Brit) is the basic certificate-granting level. You do everything, then if you do well you get a nice little PDF saying that someone purporting to be you completed the course. It's also free.
• “Verified Certificate” means that you send official proof of your identity (in fact you hold up your passport to your webcam, you take a picture of yourself with the same webcam, someone at edX matches the pictures. You may have to take additional pictures at random times during the course to prove it's still you, but that's not happened to me yet.) So the PDF now says that someone took the course and they did check it was you. There's a fee involved, which is decided on a per-course basis. The cheaper courses start at $25 a pop, and I've seen courses asking for ten times that. Besides, that's a minimum fee − remember, edX is a nonprofit. When you pick the Verified Certificate track, you can pay whatever you like as long as it's above the minimal fee.

Not all courses offer Verified certificates; not all offer Honour code certs either, but nearly all do so we won't mention U. Washington's “deal with stress” course.

Now when you sign up for a course that does offer the Verified option, you get a choice between “Audit” (free) and “Verified” (paid). But what a lot of people don't realize is that the Honour code option is still available! Just pick “Verified”, but instead of choosing an amount to pay, click the checkbox saying “What if I can't pay? Choose an Honour code certificate instead.”

So that's how it works. Or worked.

A couple of days ago, edX rolled out a release including a number of improvements, including a Dashboard update that now states clearly what track you're on for each course. So it became very clear to a lot of people that they were “auditing” courses − and that they wouldn't get the coveted certificate after all. A couple of days' worth of grumbling, and voilà: I saw in two places (including a Course Info note by the actual instructor) mention of “a change in policy”: auditing students will get certificates, too.

So, dunno if that's due to the uproar, or if the whole three-level registration is too complex anyway. It may be the end of the distinction between Audit and Honour Code.

It's also a case of convergence towards the model of the competition: Coursera has only two levels, “join for free” and “Signature Track”. You get certificates (sorry, Statements of Accomplishments) either case, but only by signing on the paid-for Signature Track is your certificate verifiable online (edX provides authenticity validation to all − so if you see an edX cert, you know that someone really took the course; you can't be certain who. If you see a Coursera statement, you only have an easily-tampered-with PDF that proves nothing.)

So, what to make of it? Well, I didn't really see the point of Audit anyway (maybe, I thought, if you don't go through with the homework and all but only watch the lectures, then you don't get the big bold “you only scored 9% on this course, while 85% is required for a pass” message on the archived course on the dashboard). So, kind of glad if that's going away.

In the short term, it means I still have a good chance of clinching that Stat 2.2 certificate (though I'm auditing the course, having joined late). So I'll be trying the final this weekend after all.