Announce edX support for our MOOCs (#847)

* Announce edX support for our MOOCs

* List the courses and give a small summary of each of them

* Explain what certificates are

Author: julienrf

news/_posts/2018-02-27-moocs-edx-support.md

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+---
+layout: inner-page-no-masthead
+post-type: announcement
+title: Our MOOCs Now Support The EdX Platform
+by: Julien Richard-Foy
+includeTOC: false
+---
+
+We are thrilled to announce that our 4 main MOOCs are now also available
+on an [Open edX instance managed at EPFL](https://courseware.epfl.ch).
+
+[![](/resources/img/courseware-scala-moocs.png)](https://courseware.epfl.ch/)
+
+The content of the courses remains the same as the ones on
+[Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/scala). The differences
+are that our platform is free to use and doesn’t deliver certificates (official credentials
+that confirm that you successfully completed a course).
+
+As a reminder, the courses are the following:
+
+- [Functional Programming Principles in Scala](https://courseware.epfl.ch/courses/course-v1:EPFL+progfun1+2018_T1/info):
+  An introduction to functional programming (pure functions, recursion, pattern matching, higher-order
+  functions, immutable data types, type parameters, equational reasoning),
+- [Functional Program Design in Scala](https://courseware.epfl.ch/courses/course-v1:EPFL+progfun2+2018_T1/info):
+  A follow-up of the first course, showing how to apply the functional programming style
+  to larger programs. Covers topics such as monads, lazy evaluation, property-based testing,
+  futures and dataflow programming.
+- [Parallel Programming](https://courseware.epfl.ch/courses/course-v1:EPFL+parprog1+2018_T1/info):
+  Introduces the fundamentals of parallel programming, from task parallelism to data parallelism,
+- [Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark](https://courseware.epfl.ch/courses/course-v1:EPFL+scala-spark-big-data+2018-T1/info):
+  Extends the data parallel paradigm to the distributed case (as opposed to shared-memory parallel
+  or sequential collections), using Spark.
+
+[Open edX](https://open.edx.org) is an open source learning management system that
+was originally developed by the [edX](https://edx.org) nonprofit.
+
+Our goal is to deliver the courses content in the most accessible way. We
+hope you will enjoy the learning experience provided by the Open edX platform.
+
+Happy learning!