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- mindhacker, on 11/19/2007, -1/+107So to summarize, a selection of open courseware offerings
* ocw.mit.edu MIT OpenCourseWare offers about 1,800 courses, some with audio and video.
* apple.com/education/itunesu iTunes U offers audio and video lectures from more than two dozen institutions at its iTunes store.
* cmu.edu/oli Carnegie Mellon University offers about 10 courses designed specifically to provide not only materials but also computerized instruction.
* ocw.tufts.edu Tufts University offers more than 30 courses in areas as different as agriculture and dentistry.
* ocw.nd.edu Materials from the University of Notre Dame are generally in the humanities and social sciences, from women in Islamic society to ancient wisdom and modern love.
* ocw.jhsph.edu Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health provides materials from some of its most popular courses, ranging from global health to nutrition.
* youtube.com/ucberkeley In addition to materials available on iTunes U, the University of California at Berkeley has posted videos of lectures of eight courses and plans to add others to YouTube.
* uocwa.org/ Utah Open Courseware Alliance lists free offerings from seven universities: College of Eastern Utah, Dixie State College, University of Utah, Utah State University, Utah Valley State College, Webster State College and Western Governors University.
* www.ocwconsortium.org The Open Courseware Consortium has links to course materials at its participating universities in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, the United States, Venezuela and Vietnam.
* www.open.ac.uk/openlearn The Open University of the United Kingdom offers modules of some its courses free through OpenLearn. By April, 5,400 hours of materials are expected to be available. - lava, on 11/19/2007, -2/+60Too bad that that's not actually the case. I'm an MIT comp sci student taking time off, haven't received my degree, and I got hired (at a good place too). But here's the kicker, one of our best employees was home-schooled, doesn't have a college degree, and he kicks my ass at programming. So there.
- CSOKI, on 11/19/2007, -7/+49Yeah, give me the credits associated with the class and I'm in.
- spargett, on 11/19/2007, -13/+42It's too bad no will give a ***** if you don't have the degree associated. It's always the ignorant simpletons that can only comprehend diplomas and resumes that are put in charge of hiring.
- OMGIAMTHEMAN, on 11/19/2007, -1/+23I'm surprised to hear all these negative comments about not getting a degree. Isn't education one of the best uses of the internet? I already have two advanced degrees and I do not care to go through another degree program - they are usually at least half garbage anyway. I'd rather spend my spare time learning what I want to learn.
I applaud these universities for giving anything at all for free especially since they mostly in the business of selling education.. They probably can't expect any of us in the public to give them alumni-style donations. This is a true public service. - Toshibi, on 11/19/2007, -2/+19Some people are just natural programmers (I was but never applied myself, I started programming at 5 years old on Apple II's and Commodores). The problem is that everyone wants a person with a degree these days, when to be honest with you, the best programmers I have ever met are self taught, because they've had to figure out their own way to do things. Same thing in a lot of fields, we need "outside the box" thinking, but if anything, structured education promotes the same old thinking.
- nshah, on 11/19/2007, -1/+17Story is old but MIT OCW is still awesome. I have been using MIT OCW whenever I can't understand my professors or TAs...
Here are some other OCWs
Tufts
http://ocw.tufts.edu/CourseList
Johns Hopkins
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/topics.cfm
Carnegie Mellon
http://www.cmu.edu/oli/ - course6, on 11/19/2007, -1/+13I think it is interesting, if you RTFA, that they mention MIT's goal was to share its teaching with other colleges to improve their education and teaching, and not to help teach "self-learners" or give students more study material.
- sinrtb, on 11/19/2007, -1/+13But if you are working towards your degree it is awesome. Now i can get multiple lectures in the courses i have trouble with.
- neko6, on 11/19/2007, -2/+13IDC, a private college in Israel (www.idc.ac.il) gave one such video course for credit as an experiment. Worked great.
Instead of having to be in class, you could just watch the lecture video at home wearing your slippers having coffee, then do your homework and send it in for grading. If something in the lecture isn't clear or you dosed off, you could just rewind and watch that part again. The professor of course saves a lot of time by not having to lecture every semester, and the students save the commute.
Having live classes even begins to seem stupid when you consider the benefits. - course6, on 11/19/2007, -2/+13So am I suppose to take your word when you say you learned differential equations from MIT when all you did was watch some video lectures? A degree (and a transcript) are suppose to be a level of measure that assures the employer that you did in fact study Diff Eq., and you performed at an acceptable level.
We can argue for ever and ever about the actual *worth* of a degree, and I'd agree that its silly that there exists a perception of some need to spend 4 years in college so you can then move on and be a secretary or something, but the fact remains that for some professions (engineering, science) the degree is needed. - Toshibi, on 11/19/2007, -1/+12I'm going to defend Spargett on this one. In former Soviet Russia, the great physicist Zeldovich would allow anyone off the street to come in and take a test to join his research group. You didn't have to prove yourself with degrees, or honors from some school, you just had to show your work.
- lukifer, on 11/19/2007, -1/+10Good stuff. I also highly recommend free courses from UC Berkeley: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php
- dext3r, on 11/19/2007, -6/+15Gah, this is on the front page like every 3 weeks.
- mojaam, on 11/19/2007, -1/+9Only schools with great professors can do this, my school will expose so many terrible professors that will cause people to avoid coming here.
- inactive, on 11/19/2007, -1/+9It doesn't help that your school's motto is "The only reason you're not playing a great video game is because you haven't created it yet."
- patw85, on 11/19/2007, -4/+11Ya I dun wunna git smarter if i dun get nuthin out of it
- s0nicfreak, on 11/19/2007, -1/+8*I* will give a ***** and that is all that matters... personally I'm not trying to be a physicist or [job related to offered material of your choice], but I enjoy gathering knowledge.
- springo, on 11/19/2007, -1/+7This is thousandth time someone makes a comment about this being on the front page for the thousandth time.
- Brian48216, on 11/20/2007, -1/+6This is what the internet was made for.
The other intention being porn. - course6, on 11/19/2007, -3/+7Sometimes there are bigger rewards to be had than credit. Example: You're a college student, and you want to take a class, but you don't have the pre-requisites. So you study them on OCW, and become fluent in the material. You then talk to the prof, and you get to take the class. Or in industry, you might need to brush up on old course work for a new project.
- inactive, on 11/19/2007, -2/+6Dugg for saying "free" and not "for free".
- rarson, on 11/19/2007, -1/+5I strongly agree. I don't have a degree, and I didn't need one to get a good job. But now that I've been working for a while, I'm noticing that my knowledge is slacking a bit and I'm a lot more interested in some of the things that I took in high school now than I was when I was actually in school. I don't want or need a piece of paper or anything, I'm simply interested in learning. This is free education for people who want to better themselves through learning. Pretty amazing to me that these schools would be willing to offer that for nothing.
- BlueScreenOD, on 11/19/2007, -1/+4I highly recommend the online linear Algebra course: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring- ...
I watch the lectures in conjunction with the course I take at my community college; it definitely helps. - jbullfrog88, on 11/20/2007, -1/+4thanks so much! I really appreciated that!
- nickgarvey, on 11/20/2007, -2/+4At least your user name fits.
- hollyminkowski, on 11/19/2007, -1/+3I program microcontrollers ..mostly the ARM9 and the AVR chips...I found several free courses at MIT that were very useful to me.
You can find these free courses here http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a ...
Some of it was WAY over my head but I gleaned quite a bit of useful info even so :-) - SuckMyDigg, on 11/20/2007, -2/+4Did I miss something? I tried to go through a couple courses a few years ago and all that was posted were some syllabi and maybe a short pdf or powerpoint presentation. Most of the "classes" were centered around the text books, which you obviously can't get for free. I was really disappointed with it.
- theciuffo, on 11/20/2007, -1/+3you must be talking about saddoway. God I hate solid state chemistry.
- desqjockey, on 11/20/2007, -1/+3Someone who is just a grading service will start handing out degrees and this will be solved. I know there are those trying: It will all depend on keeping clear, high standards of evaluation. Maybe actually adding something too by hooking you up with tutors. MIT engineering is hard, I wouldnt expect most people to pass classes there without help.
- michaelb1, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1I would have paid $.99 for that post.
- inactive, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1I must've missed the last... I don't know, year? Sorry bud, I haven't seen this one before.
- snowball69, on 11/21/2007, -0/+1As I was told after graduating, most technical degrees (possibly including medicine) are worthless in their own right after 5 years due to the speed of change within the field. What has to happen is for you to capitalise on your degree before it's "usefulness" expires and get some good references and a good CV under your belt. Qualifications are genuinely no substitute for skill and experience.
Anyone who thinks a degree is, in it's own right, a meal-ticket for life is living in a dream world. - inactive, on 11/20/2007, -1/+2What a fantastic resource...i wish i could digg it twice.....
- s1mph0ny, on 11/20/2007, -1/+2OCW is more than just powerpoints. Some of the courses have all the lectures online, and some even have the textbook online.
- konkushn, on 11/19/2007, -3/+4Most of the MIT lectures are useless. All you hear is the professor writing on the chalk board - with no way of seeing what the hell he's writing. :(
- pkrumins, on 11/20/2007, -1/+2I have been collecting free video lectures on my blog for more than a year!
Check it out: http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com
I have maths, physics, computer science, engineering, medicine, economics and various other lectures! - spargett, on 11/19/2007, -2/+3Thats great to hear. Where is it that you work? I'd like to know the company that hires progressively.
- Devotia, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1I had an online class like that. And the best part was, if you found yourself in the bottom of the class, you could just go to the professor himself for personal attention. Normally a physics class tends to be about 80 people so that's not an option, no matter how much the prof really wants to help. I really wish more profs would consider trying it.
- utdrew182, on 11/19/2007, -1/+2Funny I had a visiting prof from Princeton when I was in an SEC school, those meccas of goverment funding built during the war in the poor south still get heavy hitters in the lab.
- theodicean, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1i think Digg members arre the dreamiest in cyberspace!!!!
- n3m6, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1try london external programme. It's not free and it's going to cost about 900 pounds a year or more. But it's the best you could get.
- PhillipJFry, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1I agree up to the point where you say that there is no need for the professor to teach class over and over. There's a huge benefit to being in a class and hearing other people's question. It might not be one that you had, but every new angle you get on a problem always helps. So yes to distance learning, but no to doing it off a single repeated videotape.
- Amablue, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1Degrees don't really matter after your first job or two. Once you have a resume to back you up a degree becomes less relevant.
- byrdgang, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1Can you imagine someone becoming so involved he or she turns in homework? The professor will start to wonder why homework from students who are not on his or her roster is being turned in.
Student: Here's my homework, professor.
Professor: Thanks....wait, are you in this class?
Student: ....uh...uh....see you next week! - desqjockey, on 11/20/2007, -2/+2yeah but thats why its amusing
- curtosrules, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1learning is power! lol
- theciuffo, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1At almost a quarter million a pop for four year's, they have to find something to do with the cash.
- bedlam17, on 11/20/2007, -1/+1Yale has open courseware videos too. Harvard also has some.
- michaellaney, on 11/28/2007, -0/+0I remember when taking online courses would only get you a second rate degree. I know you don't get a diploma from these free classes, but it is cool to see how far these internet classes have come.
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