Everyday Economics: A New Course by Marginal Revolution University Where Students Create the Syllabus

In 2012, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty (oth­er­wise known as MRUni­ver­si­ty) which deliv­ers free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. Dur­ing its ear­ly days, MRUni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed cours­es on The Great Econ­o­mistsDevel­op­ment Eco­nom­icsInter­na­tion­al Trade, and The Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Sovi­et Union. And now it’s cre­at­ing a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al new course called Every­day Eco­nom­ics. The course tries to show how eco­nom­ics impacts peo­ple’s day-to-day lives. And, rather suit­ably, MRUni­ver­si­ty is invit­ing its stu­dents — every­day peo­ple around the globe — to vote for top­ics the course should cov­er. It’s what’s called a “stu­dent-dri­ven” course.

The course is being built in stages, and you can already watch lec­tures (above) from the first sec­tion, taught by Don Boudreaux. It cov­ers Trade and Pros­per­i­ty broad­ly speak­ing, and gets into top­ics like The Hock­ey Stick of Human Pros­per­i­ty and How the Divi­sion of Knowl­edge Saved My Son’s Life.

The next sec­tion, to be taught by Tyler Cowen, will focus on Food. And right now MRUni­ver­si­ty wants your input on the top­ics this sec­tion might focus on. For exam­ple, you might rec­om­mend that they explain “Why is tip­ping so preva­lent in restau­rants but not in oth­er parts of the econ­o­my?” You can make your sug­ges­tions here.

everyday economics

What oth­er top­ics will the course cov­er as it unfolds? It’s all still TBD. But, again, you’re invit­ed to help shape the syl­labus. Big­ger pic­ture sug­ges­tions are being sought here.

For more cours­es on the Dis­mal Sci­ence, don’t for­get to peruse our list of Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es. It part of our meta col­lec­tion called, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in New MOOC

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Tap Into Timeless Wisdom: Download 36 Free Courses in Ancient History, Literature & Philosophy

Parthenon_from_westsmall

I know, it’s a dat­ed ref­er­ence now, but since I still watch the remade Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca series on Net­flix, the mys­ti­cal refrain—“All of this has hap­pened before and will hap­pen again”–still seems fresh to me. At any rate, it’s fresh­er than the clichéd “his­to­ry repeats itself.” How­ev­er you phrase it, the tru­ism looks more and more like a gen­uine truth the more one stud­ies ancient his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, and phi­los­o­phy. The con­flicts and con­cerns that feel so of the moment also occu­pied the minds and lives of peo­ple liv­ing hun­dreds, and thou­sands, of years ago, and what­ev­er you make of that, it cer­tain­ly helps put the present into per­spec­tive. Can we ben­e­fit from study­ing the wis­dom, and the fol­ly, of the ancients? To this ques­tion, I like to turn to an intro­duc­to­ry essay C.S. Lewis penned to the work of a cer­tain church father:

Every age has its own out­look. It is spe­cial­ly good at see­ing cer­tain truths and spe­cial­ly liable to make cer­tain mis­takes. We all, there­fore, need the books that will cor­rect the char­ac­ter­is­tic mis­takes of our own peri­od. And that means the old books. […] If we read only mod­ern books […] where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggra­vate the error with which we are already dan­ger­ous­ly ill. The only pal­lia­tive is to keep the clean sea breeze of the cen­turies blow­ing through our minds, and this can be done only by read­ing old books.

I may dis­agree with Lewis about many things, includ­ing that “clean sea breeze” of his­to­ry, but I take to heart his point about read­ing the ancients to mit­i­gate our mod­ern bias­es and shine light on our blind spots. To that end, we present links to sev­er­al excel­lent online cours­es on the ancients from insti­tu­tions like Yale, NYU, and Stan­ford, free to peruse or take in full. See our mas­ter list—Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy—for 36 qual­i­ty offer­ings. As always, cer­tain cours­es pro­vide more resources than oth­ers, and a few only offer their lec­tures through iTunes. These are deci­sions course admin­is­tra­tors have made, not us! Even so, these free resources are invalu­able to those wish­ing to acquaint, or reac­quaint, them­selves with the study of ancient human­i­ties.

You can, for exam­ple, take a course on Ancient Israel from NYU’s Daniel Flem­ing (Free Online Video & Course Info — Free Online Video), study Plato’s Laws with the renowned Leo Strauss from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go (Free Online Audio) or Socrates ( Free Online Audio) with that university’s equal­ly renowned Alan Bloom. Take a course called “Ancient Wis­dom and Mod­ern Love” (Syl­labus - Free iTunes Video — Free Online Video) with Notre Dame’s David O’Connor or study Virgil’s AeneidFree iTunes Audio) with Susan­na Braund, whose lec­tures were record­ed at Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You’ll find many more ancient his­to­ry, lit, and phi­los­o­phy classes—36 in all, includ­ing five more Leo Strauss Pla­to seminars—on our meta list: Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy. Read, study, repeat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Learn 47 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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

Hear Roland Barthes Present His 40-Hour Course, La Préparation du roman, in French (1978–80)

RolandBarthes
A key fig­ure in such aca­d­e­m­ic areas as semi­ol­o­gy, struc­tural­ism, and post-struc­tural­ism, and author of such the­o­ret­i­cal clas­sics as Mytholo­gies, The Plea­sure of the Text, and S/Z, Roland Barthes is famil­iar to stu­dents across the human­i­ties. His pro­lif­ic out­put encom­passed books on lit­er­ary the­o­ry, phi­los­o­phy, lin­guis­tics, anthro­pol­o­gy, and the­o­ret­i­cal essays on pho­tog­ra­phy, music, fash­ion, sports, and love. In addi­tion to his wide-rang­ing writ­ings, Barthes lec­tured in the U.S., Switzer­land, and at the Col­lège de France, where he was elect­ed Chair of Semi­ol­o­gy in 1977.

Barthes’ 1978–1980 lec­ture course at the Col­lège de France—titled The Prepa­ra­tion of the Nov­el—has been pre­served in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Kate Brig­gs. Speak­ers of French, how­ev­er, can hear Barthes him­self deliv­er the lec­ture series in audio archived at Ubuweb. Lis­ten to the first ses­sion from Decem­ber, 1978 at the top of the post, and hear the fifth, with some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, above.

Deliv­ered short­ly after pub­li­ca­tion of the sem­i­nal texts men­tioned above, these lec­tures, writes edi­tor Nathalie Léger in her intro­duc­tion, “form a diptych—the two parts can be accessed inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, yet each one is indis­pens­able to the oth­er.” The last two lec­ture cours­es Barthes taught at the Col­lège de France, both, Léger writes, rep­re­sent not a sys­tem­at­ic the­o­ry, but “the pere­gri­na­tion of a quest,” explor­ing “one ques­tion and one ques­tion only: that of lit­er­ary utopia.” Such prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tions pro­pelled Barthes’ entire career, and opened up new crit­i­cal paths for a great many thinkers who dared to trace his wind­ing intel­lec­tu­al steps and often intense­ly per­son­al explo­rations.

La Pré­pa­ra­tion du roman will be added to our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Susan Son­tag Lec­tures On Lit­er­ary Pornog­ra­phy (1964)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth Released as a Free eBook and Free Course on iTunes

Yes­ter­day, E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth was released as a free iBook on iTunes. It fea­tures “state-of-the-art dig­i­tal media ani­ma­tions, video, and inter­ac­tive mod­ules in a com­pre­hen­sive 41-chap­ter text cov­er­ing stan­dards-based biol­o­gy cur­ricu­lum.” Cre­at­ed under the direc­tion of Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author and Har­vard nat­u­ral­ist Edward O.Wilson, Life on Earth can be down­loaded in 7 units on iTunes. The free book also comes with a free iTune­sU course. In addi­tion to read­ing assign­ments, the course “incor­po­rates activ­i­ties such as field obser­va­tions, writ­ing assign­ments, project-based learn­ing exer­cis­es,” using apps and oth­er mate­ri­als. Com­bin­ing infor­ma­tion from the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, and the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, the course cov­ers a vari­ety of impor­tant themes — cit­i­zen sci­ence, evo­lu­tion, cli­mate change, and pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty. The first nine chap­ters of the iTune­sU course are avail­able now, and the remain­ing mate­ri­als for the 41-chap­ter course will be released through­out 2014.

The book can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. And the course will be added to our list of Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

h/t @RandyDeutsch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter E.O. Wilson’s Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life: Free Access to All The World’s Knowl­edge About Life

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13 Lectures from Allen Ginsberg’s “History of Poetry” Course (1975)

Allen Ginsberg - 1979

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you want to under­stand poet­ry, ask a poet. “What is this?” you ask, “some kind of Zen say­ing?” Obvi­ous, but sub­tle? Maybe. What I mean to say is that I have found poet­ry one of those dis­tinc­tive prac­tices of which the prac­ti­tion­ers themselves—rather than schol­ars and critics—make the best expos­i­tors, even in such seem­ing­ly aca­d­e­m­ic sub­ject areas as the his­to­ry of poet­ry. Of course, poets, like crit­ics, get things wrong, and not every poet is a nat­ur­al teacher, but only poets under­stand poet­ry from the inside out, as a liv­ing, breath­ing exer­cise prac­ticed the world over by every cul­ture for all record­ed his­to­ry, linked by com­mon insights into the nature of lan­guage and exis­tence. Cer­tain­ly Allen Gins­berg under­stood, and taught, poet­ry this way, in his sum­mer lec­tures at the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied poet­ics, which he co-found­ed with Anne Wald­man at Chogyam Trung­pa Rinpoche’s Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in 1974.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured some of Ginsberg’s Naropa lec­tures here at Open Cul­ture, includ­ing his 1980 short course on Shakespeare’s The Tem­pest and his lec­ture on “Expan­sive Poet­ics” from 1981. Today, we bring you sev­er­al selec­tions from his lengthy series of lec­tures on the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry,” which he deliv­ered in 1975. Cur­rent­ly, thir­teen of Ginsberg’s lec­tures in the series are avail­able online through the Inter­net Archive, and they are each well worth an atten­tive lis­ten. Actu­al­ly, we should say there are twelve Gins­berg lec­tures avail­able, since Ginsberg’s fel­low Beat Gre­go­ry Cor­so led the first class in the series while Gins­berg was ill.

Cor­so taught the class in a “Socrat­ic” style, allow­ing stu­dents to ask him any ques­tions they liked and describ­ing his own process and his rela­tion­ships with oth­er Beat poets. You can hear his lec­tures here. When Gins­berg took over the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, he began (above) with dis­cus­sion of anoth­er nat­ur­al poet-edu­ca­tor, the idio­syn­crat­ic schol­ar Ezra Pound, whose for­mal­ly pre­cise inter­pre­ta­tion of the Anglo-Sax­on poem “The Sea­far­er” intro­duced many mod­ern read­ers to ancient allit­er­a­tive Old Eng­lish poet­ics. (Poet W.S. Mer­win sits in on the lec­ture and offers occa­sion­al lacon­ic com­men­tary and cor­rec­tion.)

Gins­berg ref­er­ences Pound’s pithy text The ABC of Read­ing and dis­cuss­es his pen­chant for “ransack[ing] the world’s lit­er­a­ture, look­ing for usable verse forms.” Pound, says Ginsberg—“the most hero­ic poet of the century”—taught poet­ry in his own “cranky and per­son­al” way, and Gins­berg, less cranky, does some­thing sim­i­lar, teach­ing “just the poems that I like (or the poems I found in my own ear,” though he is “much less sys­tem­at­ic than Pound.” He goes on to dis­cuss 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry poet­ics and sound and rhythm in poet­ry. One of the per­son­al quirks of Ginsberg’s style is his insis­tence that his stu­dents take med­i­ta­tion class­es and his claim that “the Eng­lish verse that was taught in high school” is very close to the “pri­ma­ry Bud­dhist under­stand­ing of tran­sien­cy.” But one can leave aside Ginsberg’s Bud­dhist preoccupations—appropriate to his teach­ing at a Bud­dhist uni­ver­si­ty, of course—and still prof­it great­ly from his lec­tures. Below, find links to eleven more of Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, with descrip­tions from the Inter­net Archive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it appears that sev­er­al of the lec­ture record­ings have not been pre­served, or at least haven’t made it to the archive, but there’s more than enough mate­r­i­al here for a thor­ough immer­sion in Gins­berg’s his­tor­i­cal poet­ics. Also, be sure to see AllenGinsberg.org for tran­scrip­tions of his “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures. You can find these lec­tures list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Part 3: class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es in the Sum­mer of 1975. Gre­go­ry Cor­so helps teach the class. Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley and Thomas Hood are dis­cussed exten­sive­ly. The class reads from Shel­ley, and Gins­berg recites Shel­ley’s “Ode to the west wind.”

Part 10: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es from 1975. Gins­burg dis­cuss­es William Shake­speare and Ben John­son in detail. Putting poet­ry to music, and the poet James Shirley are also dis­cussed.

Part 11: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es by Gins­berg in the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the meta­phys­i­cal poets dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, specif­i­cal­ly John Donne and Andrew Mar­vell. Gins­berg reads and dis­cuss­es sev­er­al of Don­ne’s and Mar­vel­l’s poems. There is also a dis­cus­sion of the meta­phys­i­cal poets and Gnos­ti­cism.

Part 12: [Gins­berg con­tin­ues his dis­cus­sion of Gnos­ti­cism and talks about Mil­ton and Wordsworth]

Part 14: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg talks about the songs of the poet William Blake. He sings to the class accom­pa­nied with his har­mo­ni­um, per­form­ing sev­er­al selec­tions from Blake’s “Songs of inno­cence” and “Songs of expe­ri­ence.”

Part 15: First half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg. from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can poet, Walt Whit­man, and a French poet of the same peri­od, Arthur Rim­baud. He also dis­cuss­es the poets’ biogra­phies and their inno­v­a­tive approach­es to style and poet­ics, fol­lowed by a read­ing by Gins­berg of a selec­tion of Whit­man’s and Rim­baud’s work.

Part 16: Sec­ond half of a class, and first half of the fol­low­ing class, on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The first twen­ty min­utes con­tin­ues a class from the pre­vi­ous record­ing, on the work and inno­va­tion of the Amer­i­can poet Walt Whit­man and the French poet Arthur Rim­baud. The remain­der of the record­ing begins an intro­duc­tion and analy­sis of the French poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire.

Part 17: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca. The New York School poet Frank O’Hara is also briefly dis­cussed. Gins­berg reads a selec­tion of poems from the their works, fol­lowed by a class dis­cus­sion.

Part 18: First half of a class about the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the Amer­i­can poet, and one of his men­tors, William Car­los Williams. Gins­berg reads selec­tions from Williams’ work, and dis­cuss­es his style and back­ground.

Part 19: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets William Car­los Williams, Gre­go­ry Cor­so and Jack Ker­ouac. He includes sev­er­al per­son­al anec­dotes about the poets and reads selec­tions from their works. A class dis­cus­sion fol­lows.

Part 20: A snip­pet of mate­r­i­al that may con­clude a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The record­ing includes three min­utes and six sec­onds of Gins­berg talk­ing about the moral­i­ty of William Car­los Williams and the sub­ject of poet­ry and per­cep­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tem­pest (1980)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

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

Take Free Online Courses at Hogwarts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

free hogwarts courses

A group of ded­i­cat­ed Har­ry Pot­ter fans have cre­at­ed a new edu­ca­tion­al web­site called Hog­warts is Here. The site is free — you only have to spend fake Galleons on the site — and it lets users enroll at the Hog­warts School of Witch­craft and Wiz­ardry and work through a sev­en-year cur­ricu­lum, tak­ing the same cours­es that Har­ry, Ron and Hermione did in the great Har­ry Pot­ter series. The first year con­sists of cours­es that will sound famil­iar to any Har­ry Pot­ter read­er: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astron­o­my, Her­bol­o­gy, His­to­ry of Mag­ic, and Trans­fig­u­ra­tion. The 9‑week online cours­es fea­ture home­work assign­ment and quizzes. Stu­dents can also read dig­i­tal text­books, such as A Stan­dard Book of Spells and A Begin­ner’s Guide to Trans­fig­u­ra­tion. We have yet to enroll in a course, so we would be curi­ous get your feed­back.

Fans of fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture will also want to check out the Tolkien cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 900 Free Online Cours­es. Also see this com­plete read­ing of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis, found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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Free Online Shakespeare Courses: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley & More

free shakespeare courses

I had the great good for­tune of hav­ing grown up just out­side Wash­ing­ton, DC, where on a fifth grade class trip to the Fol­ger Library and The­ater, I fell in love with Shake­speare. This expe­ri­ence, along with a few vis­its to see his plays per­formed at near­by Wolf­trap, made me think I might go into the­ater. Instead I became a stu­dent of lit­er­a­ture, but some­how, my love of Shake­speare on the stage didn’t trans­late to the page until col­lege.  While study­ing for a sopho­more-lev­el “His­to­ries & Tragedies” class, I sat, my Nor­ton Shake­speare open, in front of the TV—reading along while watch­ing Ken­neth Branagh’s styl­ish film adap­ta­tion of Ham­let, which draws on the entire text of the play.

Only then came the epiphany: this lan­guage is music and mag­ic. The rhyth­mic beau­ty, depths of feel­ing, humor broad and inci­sive, extra­or­di­nary range of human types.… If we are to believe pre-emi­nent Shake­speare schol­ar Harold Bloom, Shake­speare invent­ed mod­ern human­i­ty. If this seems to go too far, he at least cap­tured human com­plex­i­ty with greater inven­tive skill than any Eng­lish writer before him, and pos­si­bly after. Is there any shame in final­ly “get­ting” Shakespeare’s lan­guage from the movies? None at all. One of the most excel­lent qual­i­ties of the Bard’s work—among so many rea­sons it endures—is its seem­ing­ly end­less adapt­abil­i­ty to every pos­si­ble peri­od, cul­tur­al con­text, and medi­um.

While engage­ment with any of the innu­mer­able Shake­speare adap­ta­tions and per­for­mances promis­es reward, there’s lit­tle that enhances appre­ci­a­tion of the Bard’s work more than read­ing it under the tute­lage of a trained schol­ar in the playwright’s Eliz­a­bethan lan­guage and his­to­ry. Uni­ver­sal though he may be, Shake­speare wrote his plays in a par­tic­u­lar time and place, under spe­cif­ic influ­ences and work­ing con­di­tions. If you have not had the plea­sure of study­ing the plays in a col­lege setting—or if your mem­o­ries of those long-ago Eng­lish class­es have faded—we offer a num­ber of excel­lent free online cours­es from some of the finest uni­ver­si­ties. See a list below, all of which appear in our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er list of 875 Free Online Cours­es.

Also, speak­ing of the Fol­ger, that ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tion has just released all of Shakespeare’s plays in free, search­able online texts based on their high­ly-regard­ed schol­ar­ly print edi­tions. And though some beg to dif­fer, I still say you can’t go wrong with Branagh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

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

World Science U Starts to Offer Innovative, Free Courses in the Sciences

In high school, my physics teacher taught the class by hav­ing us lis­ten to his long, monot­o­nous lec­tures. After I real­ized that I couldn’t digest his ver­bal lessons, I stopped lis­ten­ing. Instead, I picked up a text­book and nev­er looked back. I can only imag­ine how much bet­ter off I would have been had I tak­en a physics class like Bri­an Greene’s spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty course on World Sci­ence U.

We fea­tured Greene’s work two years ago, when the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty physi­cist and math­e­mati­cian launched his impres­sive PBS series, The Fab­ric of The Cos­mos. Now, Greene and oth­er sci­en­tists have cre­at­ed a new edu­ca­tion plat­form called World Sci­ence U, and it promis­es to offer rich, rig­or­ous and engag­ing cours­es in the sci­ences — for free. As Greene explains above, the free cours­es offered by World Sci­ence U take abstract con­cepts and rep­re­sent them graph­i­cal­ly, using a slew of inter­ac­tive activ­i­ties and real-world sce­nar­ios. Stu­dents receive imme­di­ate per­for­mance feed­back on the prob­lem sets they com­plete, and have access to a large num­ber of video lec­tures. The­o­ry is illus­trat­ed by way of intu­itive ani­ma­tions, and exer­cis­es are paired with video solu­tions that take stu­dents through the ide­al way to derive the answer.

Although lat­er class­es will tack­le gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­tyquan­tum mechan­ics, and oth­er sub­jects, World Sci­ence U has only two full cours­es avail­able at present. The first is Greene’s brief con­cep­tu­al class on spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty that lasts 2–3 weeks, called Space, Time, and Ein­steinThere’s also a more advanced, uni­ver­si­ty lev­el course on the same top­ic called Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­tywhich lasts about 10 weeks. Inter­est­ed? We’ll let Greene him­self tell you a lit­tle more about them in the video below.

World Sci­ence U also has a nifty sec­tion called Sci­ence Unplugged, where read­ers can find dozens of short video answers to a mul­ti­tude of ques­tions they may have about sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts, like dark mat­ter and quan­tum mechan­ics. Below, for exam­ple, Greene explains the anthrop­ic prin­ci­ple:

To learn more, vis­it World Sci­ence U. We’ve added its ear­ly cours­es to our large list of free physics cours­es, part of our com­pendi­um of over 825 free online cours­es.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos with Bri­an Greene: Watch the Com­plete NOVA Series Online

The Ori­gins Project Brings Togeth­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Fla­tow, and More on One Stage

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