Integration Overview Diagram:
edX for Business helps leading companies upskill their labor forces by making the world’s greatest educational resources available to learners through company learning management systems. EdX for Business was developed to support enterprises as they navigate the crowded corporate learning content marketplace. Our solution is designed to be an all-inclusive, seamless integration that enables learners to discover and access edX courses and empowers learning managers to track how their learners are using edX.
The key components of edX for Business are:
- Discovery: displaying the curated edX course catalog
- Access: accessing the curated course catalog via single sign-on (SSO) integration
- Subsidy: course enrollment allowances for enterprise learners, providing flexible payment solutions (also referred as subsidy mechanisms)
- Reporting: obtaining learner data reporting
1. Discovery
edX for Business enables learners to discover edX courses through an enterprise website (which may be an LMS, an employee portal, or other system), then enroll in and complete edX courses on the edX platform. The enterprise’s course catalog is a selection of some of the over 3000 courses and programs offered by edX, curated based on the enterprise’s needs. Your edX Enterprise Relationship Manager works with you to identify your organization’s learning needs and recommends specific content and curriculum to implement a targeted learning solution. After the course catalog is created, you use the edX Enterprise API to retrieve edX course metadata including titles, descriptions, subject areas as well as image and enrollment URLs and display the course metadata in your enterprise system.
The edX Enterprise API returns course data in JSON or XML format. To integrate your enterprise course catalog with your enterprise system, your application must consume the JSON or XML formatted course information and transform it into a format that can be displayed in the enterprise system. Course information can be displayed on your site in a format that fits your current model.
For more detailed information, see Displaying a Catalog of edX Courses.
2. Access via Single Sign-on Integration
Single sign-on (SSO) integration enables learners who are signed in to their enterprise LMS to easily register and enroll in courses on edX, using their enterprise identities and without needing to sign in again on edx.org. SSO also enables edX to identify which enterprise a learner is associated with, so that data about the learner’s progress and completion can be shared by edX with the enterprise.
edX for Business supports SSO using SAML 2.0. The SAML integration is simpler and is preferred if it is available. To implement the SAML SSO integration, you need to exchange SAML metadata with edX so that your SAML identity provider (IdP) and the edX service provider (SP) recognize each other as trusted entities.
edX works closely with your organization to collect all required information to ensure that SSO integration can be performed quickly and effectively.
For more detailed information, see Integrating Enterprise Sign-on with edX.
3. Subsidy Mechanism: Discounted Enrollment for Enterprise Learners
edX for Business offers a variety of options for learners to enroll in courses, depending on your enterprise’s needs. You can offer your learners course enrollment with no out-of-pocket cost, using edX enrollment codes that you pay for. You can instead offer learners course enrollment at a discounted price; the cost to you may depend on the estimated volume of transactions. You can also take advantage of subscription licenses with a fixed fee per learner that allows unlimited verified track enrollments for courses available in the subscriptions catalog. You may also offer a mix of these payment alternatives. The process for course enrollment discounts, pre-paid enrollment codes or subscription licenses is automated and does not require any additional integration work. Enrollment discounts are also available as a stand-alone service, separate from the SSO and Enterprise API integrations. You can offer your learners discounts on certified edX courses of any amount, including a 100% discount that makes the course free to the learner. When a learner from your enterprise enrolls in a course in your enterprise course catalog through the edX for Business integration, that enrollment counts against your enterprise seat allocation.
4. Reporting Workflow and Learner Data Sharing
In most cases, learning managers want information about how their learners are using edX: what courses they have enrolled in, what courses they have completed, and more. This information helps learning managers evaluate the success of the program and return on investment. It may also helps learners get credit in their enterprise for completing courses, if that is part of the enterprise learning policy.
When a learner enrolls in an edX course and edX identifies them as belonging to an enterprise, the learner is presented with the choice to consent to edX sharing their course progress data with the enterprise. If the learner consents, information about their course activity will be included in the enterprise’s learner data report sent by edX. If they do not consent, they cannot enroll in the course through the edX for Business integration.
edX offers a variety of reporting mechanisms for retrieving learner related data and metrics. For example, one option is to receive a periodic report of learner data in CSV format. Only data from courses that are within the enterprise’s catalog is shared with the enterprise.
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