Stanford Makes Open Source Platform, Class2Go, Available to All; Launches MOOC on Platform Today

Are you on the hunt for a free, open source plat­form that will let you deliv­er free online cours­es? We’ve already told you about one option: Google Course Builder. Now here’s anoth­er: Stan­ford’s Class2Go. The plat­form is open, mean­ing that you can grab the code base for free and run it on your very own serv­er. Class2Go is also portable, giv­ing schools the abil­i­ty to move doc­u­ments and media to oth­er plat­forms if they so choose. The Stan­ford plat­form is inter­op­er­a­ble in the sense that it builds on exist­ing soft­ware (MySQL, Github, Piaz­za, MySQL, Python Djan­go, etc.). And, unlike some oth­er plat­forms, Class2Go gives edu­ca­tors imme­di­ate access to valu­able data, allow­ing them to make refine­ments to the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.

Although still under devel­op­ment, Class2Go is ready for action. In the fall, Stan­ford offered two MOOCs through Class2Go (Com­put­er Net­work­ing and Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, & Bat­ter­ies). And it has a new MOOC get­ting start­ed today: Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es taught by Jen­nifer Widom, the Chair of Stan­ford’s famed Com­put­er Sci­ence depart­ment. (Watch her intro above.) You can take the course for free and learn all about data­base devel­op­ment. Or you can use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see Class2Go up close.

In the com­ing months, Class2Go will be deployed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. If you’re tempt­ed to do the same at your own uni­ver­si­ty, you can get the Class2Go code here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete list of MOOCs and Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties

650 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (a huge trove of video/audio lec­tures)