Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography in Her First Online Course

in Online Courses, Photography | December 15th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Dol­ly Par­ton and Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Barack Oba­ma and fam­i­ly, Bruce Spring­steen, Whoopi Gold­berg, Bill Gates, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, Lady Gaga: name some­one who has risen to the very top of the zeit­geist over the past few decades, and Annie Lei­bovitz has prob­a­bly pho­tographed them. Her images, in fact, have often come to stand for the images of her sub­jects in the cul­ture: when we think of cer­tain celebri­ties, we instinc­tive­ly imag­ine them as they appeared on a Lei­bovitz-shot cov­er of Rolling Stone or Van­i­ty Fair. Safe to say, then, that she knows a thing or two about how to take a pic­ture that makes an impact.

The peo­ple at online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class have now pack­aged that knowl­edge in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy,” a course that joins their exist­ing line­up that includes Helen Mir­ren on act­ing, Steve Mar­tin on com­e­dy, Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing, and Her­bie Han­cock on jazz. For a price of $90 (or $180 for a year-long pass to all of their class­es), Mas­ter­class offers a pack­age of work­book-accom­pa­nied video lessons in which “Annie teach­es you how to devel­op con­cepts, work with sub­jects, shoot with nat­ur­al light, and bring images to life in post-pro­duc­tion.”

The ear­ly lessons in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy” cov­er sub­jects like mem­o­ries of her own devel­op­ment as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to dis­cus­sions of her influ­ences and her view of the medi­um itself. Lat­er on, she gets into the real-life case study of shoot­ing chef Alice Waters for Van­i­ty Fair, dig­i­tal post-pro­duc­tion, how to come up with the right con­cept (ide­al­ly, so her career has shown, one just strange or dar­ing enough to get peo­ple talk­ing), and how to work with your sub­ject. “There’s this idea that in por­trai­ture, it’s the pho­tog­ra­pher’s job to set the sub­ject at ease,” Lei­bovitz says in the class trail­er above. “I don’t believe that.”

Few aspects of Lei­bovitz’s method have drawn as much atten­tion as the way she han­dles her sub­jects,  which tends to involve both devel­op­ing enough of a rela­tion­ship with them to gain some under­stand­ing of their inner lives and putting them in sit­u­a­tions which, so she has stu­dious­ly learned while get­ting to know them, may lie a bit out­side of their com­fort zone. Few of us will ever have that much face time with a pho­tog­ra­ph­er like Lei­bovitz, let alone enough to ask her in-depth ques­tions about the craft, but if you sus­pect you might find your­self one day in a posi­tion to pho­to­graph the next Cait­lyn Jen­ner, Mark Zucker­berg, or Kim Kar­dashi­an — or some­one more impor­tant to you per­son­al­ly — the strate­gies explained in her Mas­ter­class course will sure­ly come in handy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

School of Visu­al Arts Presents 99 Hours of Free Pho­tog­ra­phy Lec­tures

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Ansel Adams, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: 1958 Doc­u­men­tary Cap­tures the Cre­ative Process of the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Presents a Free Online Class on Fashion: Enroll in Fashion as Design Today

in Art, Design, Fashion, Museums, Online Courses | November 24th, 2017

Fash­ion as Design, a free online course by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA), begin­ning this com­ing week , may not equip you with the skills to bring a fab­u­lous gar­ment to fruition, but it will help you under­stand the con­text behind clothes both worka­day and wild.

Led by Depart­ment of Archi­tec­ture and Design Senior Cura­tor Pao­la Antonel­li, Cura­to­r­i­al Assis­tant Michelle Mil­lar Fish­er, and Research Assis­tant Stephanie Kramer—whose respec­tive fash­ion heroes are actor Cate Blanchett, design­er Claire McAr­dle, and activist Glo­ria Steinem—the course will con­sid­er the his­to­ry and impact of 70+ indi­vid­ual gar­ments.

The pieces can be exam­ined in per­son through the end of Jan­u­ary as part of MoMA’s Items: Is Fash­ion Mod­ern? exhi­bi­tion.

Some of the duds on the syl­labus ben­e­fit­ed from a celebri­ty boost, such as Bruce Lee’s icon­ic red track suit, recre­at­ed with its prop­er ear­ly 70’s cut, below.

Oth­ers, just as icon­ic, can be bought with­out fan­fare in a drug­store or supermarket—witness the plain white t‑shirt, intro­duced to MoMA’s col­lec­tion when Antonel­li was curat­ing 2004’s Hum­ble Mas­ter­pieces: Every­day Mar­vels of Design.

Stu­dents with no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in fash­ion may be intrigued to con­sid­er the threads on their backs through such lens­es as mar­ket­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, pol­i­tics, iden­ti­ty, and eco­nom­ics.

Stu­dents will also delve into the life­cy­cle of cloth­ing, fash­ion-relat­ed labor prac­tices, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The more con­sumers under­stand this side of the biz, the like­li­er it is that the fash­ion indus­try will be pushed toward adopt­ing more eth­i­cal prac­tices.

Enroll in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s free Fash­ion as Design course here or stick a toe in with the com­pan­ion exhi­bi­tion’s Youtube playlist or the teach­ers’ delight­ful­ly can­did first-per­son com­men­tary in Sur­face Magazine’s behind-the-scenes cov­er­age:

The Hood­ie

The hood­ie is one of those items that has had a long and mul­ti­fac­eted life, and one that’s become so polit­i­cal­ly charged. But this sweater, with the hood and the string, with or with­out the zip­per, is from the 1930s, from a com­pa­ny that was called Knicker­bock­er Knit­ting Com­pa­ny, before it became Cham­pi­on. Ini­tial­ly the hood­ie was made for ath­letes, to keep them warm before or after train­ing. It was imme­di­ate­ly co-opt­ed by con­struc­tion and cold-stor­age work­ers. Then in the 1970s and ’80s it became city-dwelling kids’ gar­ment of choice when skate­board­ing ille­gal­ly or writ­ing graf­fi­ti or break­danc­ing. There’s an aspect of the hood­ie that’s become a kind of qui­et defi­ance of the system—of want­i­ng to be in the mid­dle of it but some­how away from it. The hood­ie gives you a false impres­sion of being invis­i­ble. All these dif­fer­ent his­to­ries bring us to today. The Trayvon Mar­tin and George Zim­mer­man inci­dent a few years ago trans­formed the hood­ie into this sym­bol of injus­tice. We’re going to have this red Cham­pi­on hood­ie from the 1980s—when it’s at the moment of tran­si­tion. But it’s going to be there by itself and we’re hop­ing it’s going to be real­ly res­o­nant. It shows the pow­er that cer­tain gar­ments have to become sym­bols for polit­i­cal strug­gle. —Pao­la Antonel­li

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Helen Mirren Now Teaching Her First Online Course on Acting

in Film, Online Courses | November 20th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­Class remains on fire. In recent months, the new online course provider has announced the devel­op­ment of online cours­es taught by lead­ing fig­ures in their fields. And cer­tain­ly some names you’ll rec­og­nize: Mar­tin Scors­ese on Film­mak­ing, Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz, Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment, David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing, Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy, Ron Howard on Direct­ing and Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing too. Now add this to the list: Helen Mir­ren on Act­ing:

Writes Mas­ter­Class:

Oscar, Gold­en Globe, Emmy, and Tony win­ner Helen Mir­ren is one of the great­est actress­es of our time. In her first online class, she dis­cuss­es the dual­ism that is core to her method: the neces­si­ty for mas­ter­ing tech­nique (craft) and then let­ting go so that your imag­i­na­tion can take over (art). Learn how to break down a script, research char­ac­ters, and mas­ter tech­niques so you can tran­scend them to find free­dom in every role.

The course just opened for enroll­ment. Priced at $90, the course fea­tures 28 video lessons where Mir­ren “brings you behind the scenes to show you the secrets of her act­ing tech­nique.” And a down­load­able work­book that fea­tures sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als and les­son recaps.

Learn more about Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in get­ting access to all of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es, you can buy an All-Access Annu­al Pass.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Mir­ren Holds Her Own (and Then Some) in a Cringe-Induc­ing­ly Sex­ist TV Inter­view, 1975

Helen Mir­ren Tells Us Why Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Act­ing & Mod­ern Art Have in Com­mon)

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Herbie Hancock Is Now Teaching His First Online Course on Jazz

in Music, Online Courses | November 16th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

A quick update to some­thing we first men­tioned last June. On Mas­ter­class, jazz leg­end Her­bie Han­cock is now teach­ing his first online course on jazz. In 25 video lessons, the 14-time Gram­my win­ner shares his approach to impro­vi­sa­tion, com­po­si­tion, and har­mo­ny, and gives stu­dents access to 10+ orig­i­nal piano tran­scrip­tions, includ­ing 5 exclu­sive solo per­for­mances. Plus there’s a down­load­able work­book.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

What Miles Davis Taught Her­bie Han­cock: In Music, as in Life, There Are No Mis­takes, Just Chances to Impro­vise 

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

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Bob Woodward Is Now Teaching an Online Course on Investigative Journalism–a Course for Our Time

in Media, Online Courses | November 10th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Bob Wood­ward made his bones as an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist when he and fel­low Wash­ing­ton Post reporter Carl Bern­stein blew open the Water­gate scan­dal in 1972. Their report­ing exposed the “dirty tricks” of Richard Nixon’s re-elec­tion com­mit­tee. Gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions fol­lowed and the pres­i­dent even­tu­al­ly resigned.

Today we’re liv­ing in anoth­er age when inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism is of para­mount impor­tance. Only now it’s under attack. But, take heart, Bob Wood­ward is now teach­ing an online course on inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. In 24 video lessons, he’ll teach you the impor­tance of human sources, how to gath­er infor­ma­tion, how to inter­view peo­ple, estab­lish facts, and build a sto­ry. He reminds us, “This is the time when we’re being test­ed. Let’s tell the truth, let’s not be chick­en­shit.” Amen to that.

You can now enroll in his course, which costs $90. But, for $180, you can get an annu­al pass to every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue. Oth­er cours­es in the Mas­ter­class cat­a­logue include:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Down­load Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House as a Free Audio­book

Bob Wood­ward: How Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism Gets Done

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Yale Presents a Free Online Course on Miguel de Cervantes’ Masterpiece Don Quixote

in Literature, Online Courses | November 9th, 2017

Among the lit­er­ary works that emerged in the so-called Gold­en Age of Span­ish cul­ture in the 16th and 17th cen­turies, one shines so bright­ly that it seems to eclipse all oth­ers, and indeed is said to not only be the foun­da­tion of mod­ern Span­ish writ­ing, but of the mod­ern nov­el itself. Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote syn­the­sized the Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture that had come before it in a bril­liant­ly satir­i­cal work, writes pop­u­lar aca­d­e­m­ic Harold Bloom, with “cos­mo­log­i­cal scope and rever­ber­a­tion.” But in such high praise of a great work, we can lose sight of the work itself. Don Quixote is hard­ly an excep­tion.

“The notion of ‘lit­er­ary clas­sic,’” Simon Leys writes at the New York Review of Books, “has a solemn ring about it. But Don Quixote, which is the clas­sic par excel­lence, was writ­ten for a flat­ly prac­ti­cal pur­pose: to amuse the largest pos­si­ble num­ber of read­ers, in order to make a lot of mon­ey for the author (who need­ed it bad­ly).” To men­tion these inten­tions is not to dimin­ish the work, but per­haps even to bur­nish it fur­ther. To have cre­at­ed, as Yale’s Rober­to González Echevar­ría says in his intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture above, “one of the unques­tioned mas­ter­pieces of world lit­er­a­ture, let alone the West­ern Canon,” while seek­ing pri­mar­i­ly to enter­tain and make a buck says quite a lot about Cer­vantes’ con­sid­er­able tal­ents, and, per­haps, about his mod­ernism.

Rather than write for a feu­dal patron, monarch, or deity, he wrote for what he hoped would be a prof­itable mass-mar­ket. In so doing, says Pro­fes­sor González, quot­ing Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, Cer­vantes wrote “a nov­el in which there is already every­thing that nov­el­ists would attempt to do in the future until today.” González’s course, “Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote,” is now avail­able online in a series of 24 lec­tures, avail­able on YouTube and iTunes. (Stream all 24 lec­tures below.) You can down­load all of the course mate­ri­als, includ­ing the syl­labus and overview of each class, here. There is a good deal of read­ing involved, and you’ll need to get your hands on a few extra books. In addi­tion to the weighty Quixote, “stu­dents are also expect­ed to read four of Cer­vantes’ Exem­plary Sto­ries, Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote: A Case­book, and J.H. Elliott’s Impe­r­i­al Spain.” It would seem well worth the effort.

Pro­fes­sor González goes on in his intro­duc­tion to dis­cuss the novel’s impor­tance to such fig­ures as Sig­mund Freud, Jorge Luis Borges, and British schol­ar Ian Watt, who called Don Quixote “one of four myths of mod­ern indi­vid­u­al­ism, the oth­ers being Faust, Don Juan, and Robin­son Cru­soe.” The novel’s his­tor­i­cal resume is tremen­dous­ly impres­sive, but the most impor­tant thing about it, says González, is that it has been read and enjoyed by mil­lions of peo­ple around the world for hun­dreds of years. Just why is that?

The pro­fes­sor quotes from his own intro­duc­tion to the Pen­guin Clas­sics edi­tion he asks stu­dents to read in pro­vid­ing his answer: “Miguel de Cer­vantes Saavedra’s mas­ter­piece has endured because it focus­es on literature’s fore­most appeal: to become anoth­er, to leave a typ­i­cal­ly embat­tled self for anoth­er clos­er to one’s desires and aspi­ra­tions. This is why Don Quixote has often been read as a children’s book, and con­tin­ues to be read by and to chil­dren.” Crit­ics might be prone to dis­miss such enjoy­able wish ful­fil­ment as triv­ial, but the cen­turies-long suc­cess of Don Quixote shows it may be the foun­da­tion of all mod­ern lit­er­ary writ­ing.

Don Quixote will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

Sal­vador Dalí Sketch­es Five Span­ish Immor­tals: Cer­vantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Gre­co & Velázquez

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Samuel L. Jackson Teaches Acting in a New Online Course, Drawing on His Iconic Pulp Fiction Performance & Others

in Film, Online Courses | October 25th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

With an actor as pro­lif­ic and as long in the game as Samuel L. Jack­son, a fan can pick a favorite per­for­mance only with great dif­fi­cul­ty. Should it come from his roles in Hol­ly­wood block­busters like Juras­sic Park, Die Hard with a Vengeance, the Star Wars pre­quels, or the com­ic-book spec­ta­cles of Mar­vel Stu­dios? His roles for icon­o­clas­tic auteurs like Spike Lee, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Steven Soder­bergh, and Paul Thomas Ander­son? His role — immor­tal title line and all — in Snakes on a Place? For many, though, Jack­son attains prime Jack­so­ni­an­ism in only one con­text: his ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Quentin Taran­ti­no.

When­ev­er Jack­son appears in a Taran­ti­no film, whichev­er char­ac­ter he plays imme­di­ate­ly becomes one of the most mem­o­rable in cin­e­ma’s past 25 years. But will any ever sur­pass Pulp Fic­tion’s Jheri-curled hit­man Jules Win­n­field for sheer impact per moment onscreen? Taran­ti­no wrote the part espe­cial­ly for Jack­son after see­ing what he could do with a thug­gish char­ac­ter in Tony Scot­t’s True Romance, whose script Taran­ti­no had also writ­ten. Taran­ti­no’s sec­ond fea­ture film (and Jack­son’s thir­ti­eth) rock­et­ed the actor to the top of the zeit­geist, not least on the strength of what we now call the “Ezekiel speech­es,” the scenes in which Jack­son-as-Win­n­field quotes what he describes as the Bible pas­sage Ezekiel 25:17:

Blessed is he who, in the name of char­i­ty and good will, shep­herds the weak through the val­ley of the dark­ness. For he is tru­ly his broth­er’s keep­er and the find­er of lost chil­dren. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furi­ous anger those who attempt to poi­son and destroy my broth­ers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

Jack­son’s first Ezekiel speech (which owes as much to mar­tial-arts star Son­ny Chi­ba as to any holy text) comes toward the begin­ning of the movie, as he and his part­ner in killing Vin­cent Vega (a role that also did a great deal for its per­former John Tra­vol­ta, return­ing him to his for­mer cul­tur­al promi­nence) turn up to an apart­ment to do a job. He deliv­ers his final one in the high­ly Taran­tin­ian set­ting of a Los Ange­les din­er booth, and both Taran­ti­no and Jack­son do their utmost to make it reveal his char­ac­ter’s trans­for­ma­tion in his jour­ney through the sto­ry.

It makes sense, then, that Jack­son would break down and recre­ate that din­er scene in the online course “Samuel L. Jack­son Teach­es Act­ing,” new­ly offered (for a fee of $90) by the edu­ca­tion start­up Mas­ter­class. “I made a deci­sion ear­ly in life that I was­n’t going to live and die in Chat­tanooga, Ten­nessee,” he says in its trail­er, a line that could belong to the kind of mono­logue he deliv­ers so pow­er­ful­ly in the movies. “Being able to embody a lot of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in film has been very cathar­tic, being able to let go of the anger or the dis­ap­point­ment that I had in my life.” Jack­son’s Mas­ter­class promis­es cov­er­age of script break­down, voice, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, audi­tion­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and voiceover act­ing — cathar­sis, it seems, comes as a bonus. You can enroll now and get access to the 20-les­son course. Or you can pur­chase an All-Access Annu­al Pass for every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­log for $180.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s Orig­i­nal Wish List for the Cast of Pulp Fic­tion

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son

Samuel L. Jack­son Stars in “Wake the F**ck Up for Oba­ma,” a NSFW Polit­i­cal Children’s Tale

See Flan­nery O’Connor’s Sto­ry “The Dis­placed Per­son” Adapt­ed to a Film Star­ring a Young Samuel L. Jack­son (1977)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Coursera Partners with Leading Universities to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Affordable Price

in Business, Computer Science, Online Courses | October 24th, 2017

If you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’re already famil­iar with Cours­era, the ed tech com­pa­ny, which, since its found­ing in 2012, has giv­en the world access to online cours­es from top universities–e.g. cours­es on Roman Archi­tec­ture (Yale), Mod­ern and Post­mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy (Wes­leyan), and Bud­dhism and Neu­ro­science (Prince­ton). And you’ve per­haps noticed, too, that Cours­era has recent­ly bun­dled cer­tain cours­es into “Spe­cial­iza­tions”–essen­tial­ly areas of concentration–that let stu­dents spe­cial­ize in fields like Deep Learn­ing and Data Sci­ence.

But what if stu­dents want to deep­en their knowl­edge fur­ther and get a tra­di­tion­al degree? In what per­haps marks the begin­ning of a sig­nif­i­cant new trend, Cours­era has part­nered with lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties to offer full-fledged grad­u­ate degrees in a more afford­able online for­mat. As described in the video above, HEC Paris (the #2 busi­ness school in Europe) now offers through Cours­er­a’s plat­form a Mas­ter’s in Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship. Designed for aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs, the pro­gram con­sists of 20 cours­es (all online) and takes an esti­mat­ed 10–16 months to com­plete. The total tuition amounts to 20,000 Euros (rough­ly 23,500 U.S. dol­lars), a sum that’s con­sid­er­ably less than what exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion pro­grams usu­al­ly cost.

For stu­dents look­ing for a broad­er edu­ca­tion in busi­ness, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign has launched an entire MBA pro­gram through Cours­era. Con­sist­ing of 18 online cours­es and three cap­stone projects, the iMBA pro­gram cov­ers the sub­jects usu­al­ly found in b‑school programs–leadership, strat­e­gy, eco­nom­ics, account­ing, finance, etc. The com­plete cur­ricu­lum should take rough­ly 24 to 36 months to com­plete, and costs less than $22,000–about 25%-33% of what an on-cam­pus MBA pro­gram typ­i­cal­ly runs.

(The iMBA is actu­al­ly one of three degree pro­grams the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois has launched on Cours­era. The oth­er two include a Mas­ters in Account­ing (iMSA) and a Mas­ter of Com­put­er Sci­ence in Data Sci­ence (MCS-DS).)

Now, in case you’re won­der­ing, the diplo­mas and tran­scripts for these pro­grams are grant­ed direct­ly by the uni­ver­si­ties them­selves (e.g., the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign and HEC Paris). The paper­work does­n’t car­ry Cours­er­a’s name. Nor does it indi­cate that the stu­dent com­plet­ed an “online pro­gram.” In short, online stu­dents get the same tran­script as bricks and mor­tar stu­dents.

Final­ly, all of the degree pro­grams men­tioned above are “stackable”–meaning stu­dents can (at no cost) take an indi­vid­ual course offered by any of these pro­grams. And then they can decide lat­er whether they want to apply to the degree pro­gram, and, if so, retroac­tive­ly apply that course towards the actu­al degree. Essen­tial­ly, you can try things out before mak­ing a larg­er com­mit­ment.

If you want to learn more about these pro­grams, or sub­mit an appli­ca­tion, check out the fol­low­ing links. We’ve includ­ed the dead­lines for sub­mit­ting appli­ca­tions.

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Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many With Cer­tifi­cates)

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