Currently, edX only offers courses designed by universities and colleges.

But in the coming months the IMF will use the not-for-profit platform to offer courses to ¡°small groups¡± of government officials and plans to open them up to the public in 2014.

The first pilot courses will be in financial programming and policies, and debt sustainability analysis.

Sharmini Coorey, director of the IMF¡¯s Institute for Capacity Development, said in a statement: ¡°We are delighted to join with edX in this new initiative, which will allow us to respond to the demands for more training from our member countries.

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¡°We hope that these short courses will be useful to students and teachers, the financial services industry, members of parliament and civil society, and many others, thus promoting greater understanding of economic policy issues,¡± she said.

The IMF already has eight training centres around the world and in 2012 delivered courses to around 7,800 officials.

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Anant Agarwal, edX¡¯s president, said that it was a ¡°natural progression¡± to work with institutions outside the university sector.

¡°This collaboration with the IMF demonstrates another innovative use of the edX platform,¡± he said.

So far, the US-based platform has links with different higher education institutions from across the world, and is governed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.?

david.matthews@tsleducation.com