Learning For Free
I am a big fan of an online offering called Coursera, an educational technology company that offers MOOCs, or massive open online courses. It was founded by two Stanford University computer science professors, and the idea was to have Coursera work with universities to make some of their course offerings available online. Free. Why?
Because like most things, the intent was never to have to *stay* free. The free part was to get you hooked on taking courses online, on your schedule, your time - getting university level courses, potentially credit, and often certification, and then gradually start offering some of the more popular courses for a fee, particularly if certification or some other benefit came with it.
The schools that are involved are no bottom feeders, either: Duke, Emory, University of Pennsylvania, UC, and many more, and courses ranging from all manner of computer science offerings to audio production, humanities, math, and the arts.
The other interesting thing about Coursera is that, contrary to what you might expect, the workload is not minimal, and the assignments can be rigorous. You had better be prepared for more than just the 20 minute or so daily lecture once your six week course begins. While your will often be evaluated by peers on assignments - there are, after all, potentially tens of thousands of students taking a particular course at any given time - the assignments can be challenging, and I found to my chagrin in a computer science course I took, very time consuming.
ITunes also has a free offering that has merit for those of us who love to learn: free lectures at iTunes U. Next time you sync up your phone or iPod, go look for iTunes U, or better yet, do a Google search, and you'll turn up just about every school you've ever heard of across the planet offering courses. Lectures and many courses are free - and if you're an instructor, you might be interested in the app that allows you to design a course to be offered to students around the globe in your field of expertise. Somehow, somewhere, I just know Steve Jobs is smiling about this one.
Because like most things, the intent was never to have to *stay* free. The free part was to get you hooked on taking courses online, on your schedule, your time - getting university level courses, potentially credit, and often certification, and then gradually start offering some of the more popular courses for a fee, particularly if certification or some other benefit came with it.
The schools that are involved are no bottom feeders, either: Duke, Emory, University of Pennsylvania, UC, and many more, and courses ranging from all manner of computer science offerings to audio production, humanities, math, and the arts.
The other interesting thing about Coursera is that, contrary to what you might expect, the workload is not minimal, and the assignments can be rigorous. You had better be prepared for more than just the 20 minute or so daily lecture once your six week course begins. While your will often be evaluated by peers on assignments - there are, after all, potentially tens of thousands of students taking a particular course at any given time - the assignments can be challenging, and I found to my chagrin in a computer science course I took, very time consuming.
ITunes also has a free offering that has merit for those of us who love to learn: free lectures at iTunes U. Next time you sync up your phone or iPod, go look for iTunes U, or better yet, do a Google search, and you'll turn up just about every school you've ever heard of across the planet offering courses. Lectures and many courses are free - and if you're an instructor, you might be interested in the app that allows you to design a course to be offered to students around the globe in your field of expertise. Somehow, somewhere, I just know Steve Jobs is smiling about this one.
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