Phyo N. Kyaw ’10, 23, was killed on Dec. 27 after he was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle at the intersection of Vassar Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

MIT is developing an online educational platform that will be open-source, largely free, and let users outside of MIT earn certificates for completing Institute-caliber courses online. MIT hopes the initiative, internally dubbed “MITx,” will change the way students learn on-campus — by incorporating elements of MITx into existing curricula — and push MIT’s educational reach beyond campus borders in a way the current OpenCourseWare (OCW) cannot.

680 of 6,008 Early Action applications (11.3 percent) received an early holiday present when they were admitted to the Class of 2016 on Dec. 17, 2011. 3,731 applicants (62.1 percent) were deferred to Regular Action while 1,308 students (21.8 percent) were not offered admission. 289 students withdrew or did not complete their application.

CAMBRIDGE — As the traffic signal turned red Friday morning, Marcia Pearson paused her lavender bicycle in the middle of Vassar Street.