Udacity to Launch 5 New Courses, from Statistics to Physics. Shooting for Largest Online Class Ever.

in Math, Online Courses | June 18th, 2012

This week­end, the Wall Street Jour­nal pub­lished a gush­ing lit­tle pro­file on Sebas­t­ian Thrun. By now, you prob­a­bly know his bio. Thrun helped invent the self-dri­ving car at Google and taught arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence at Stan­ford, before ditch­ing his tenured teach­ing posi­tion and launch­ing Udac­i­ty, a new ven­ture that offers MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) to stu­dents every­where.

Also this week­end, Thrun kicked off an effort to “break the stu­dent record for the largest online class ever taught” with his new class, Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics: Mak­ing Deci­sions Based on Data. It starts June 25, and above you can watch Thrun give a short (Hans Rosling-like) intro­duc­tion to the class.  The course is entire­ly free and open to stu­dents every­where. Stu­dents will receive dynam­ic feed­back along the way, and dili­gent stu­dents will get a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion at the end. So what’s stop­ping you? Cer­tain­ly not mon­ey or geog­ra­phy. Oth­er cours­es start­ing on June 25 include:

Intro to Physics: Land­marks in Physics

Algo­rithms: Crunch­ing Social Net­works

Log­ic & Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics: Foun­da­tions of Com­put­ing

Soft­ware Test­ing: How to Make Soft­ware Fail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cours­era Adds Human­i­ties Cours­es, Rais­es $16 Mil­lion, Strikes Deal with 3 Uni­ver­si­ties

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Why the Uni­ver­si­ty Sys­tem, as We Know It, Won’t Last …. and What’s Com­ing Next

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

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A Master List of 500 Free Courses From Great Universities

in Online Courses | June 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the past two days, our list of Free Online Movies has been get­ting some good expo­sure. And we’ve got no com­plaints. But while assem­bling the movie list, we were also busy putting togeth­er a list of 500 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Here’s the low­down: This mas­ter list lets you down­load free cours­es from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and UC Berke­ley. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites. Right now you’ll find 55 cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy, 50 in His­to­ry, 50 in Com­put­er Sci­ence, 35 in Physics, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. Most of the cours­es were recent­ly pro­duced. But, in some cas­es, we’ve lay­ered in lec­ture series by famous intel­lec­tu­als record­ed years ago. Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list.

  • African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle – YouTube– iTunes – Clay Car­son, Stan­ford
  • Finan­cial Mar­kets 2011 — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site – Robert Shiller, Yale
  • Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse – YouTube – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
  • Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy – iTunes Video – YouTube – Robert Sapol­sky, Stan­ford
  • Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) – Down­load Course – Chris­tine Hayes, Yale.
  • Heidegger’s Being & Time – iTunes — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Inten­sive Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence Using C, PHP, and JavaScript – Mul­ti­ple For­mats – iTunes – David Malan, Har­vard
  • Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy and Par­ti­cle Physics – YouTube – Sean Car­roll, Cal­tech
  • Invi­ta­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture – Web Site — David Dam­rosch, Har­vard
  • iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment in iOS5 - HD Video iTunes — Stan­dard-Def Video iTunes — Paul Hegar­ty, Stan­ford
  • Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – YouTube — Web Site- Michael Sandel, Har­vard
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage – iTunes – John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Physics for Future Pres­i­dents – YouTube – Richard Muller, UC Berke­ley
  • Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics – Web Site - Richard Feyn­man, Pre­sent­ed at Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land
  • Sci­ence, Mag­ic and Reli­gion - iTunes — YouTube – Courte­nay Raiai, UCLA
  • The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 – YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Down­load Course – Amy Hunger­ford, Yale
  • The Art of Liv­ing – Web Site – Team taught, Stan­ford

Vis­it this list of Free Cours­es for many more hours of free enrich­ment. Sep­a­rate­ly, you might also want to check out our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons. It offers free lessons in over 40 lan­guages.

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Yale’s Open Courses Inspire a New Series of Old-Fashioned Books

in Books, Online Courses, Yale | May 6th, 2012

Last month we report­ed on Yale’s addi­tion of sev­en new online cours­es to its grow­ing ros­ter of free offer­ings. Now we’ve learned that Yale is inau­gu­rat­ing a new series of books based on its pop­u­lar open cours­es.

“It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a dig­i­tal project to move into books and e‑books, because these are a much more con­ven­tion­al way of pub­lish­ing,” Open Yale Cours­es found­ing project direc­tor Diana E.E. Klein­er told The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion last week. But the books are in keep­ing with Open Yale’s mis­sion of “reach­ing out in every way that we could.”

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press is bring­ing out the first six titles this year. The paper­backs are priced at rough­ly $12 on Ama­zon, with e‑book edi­tions going for clos­er to $10.  The first three vol­umes–The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture by Paul H. Fry, New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture by Dale B. Mar­tin, and Death by Shelly Kagan–are avail­able now, while three addi­tion­al titles–The Moral Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­tics by Ian Shapiro, Intro­duc­tion to the Bible by Chris­tine Hayes, and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy by Steven B. Smith–will be pub­lished lat­er this year. The pub­lish­er says the books are “designed to bring the depth and breadth of a Yale edu­ca­tion to a wide vari­ety of read­ers.”

For more open edu­ca­tion resources, take a moment to explore our col­lec­tion of 450 free online cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Worldwide

in Harvard, MIT, Online Courses | May 2nd, 2012

It all start­ed ear­ly last fall. Sebas­t­ian Thrun went a lit­tle rogue (oh the audac­i­ty!) and start­ed offer­ing free online cours­es under Stan­ford’s ban­ner to mass audi­ences, with each course promis­ing a “state­ment of accom­plish­ment” at the end. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of stu­dents signed up, and uni­ver­si­ties every­where took notice.

Since then we have wit­nessed uni­ver­si­ties and star­tups scram­bling fair­ly mad­ly to cre­ate their own MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), hop­ing to gain a foothold in a new area that could even­tu­al­ly dis­rupt edu­ca­tion in a major way. In Decem­ber, MIT announced the cre­ation of MITx, promis­ing free cours­es and a “cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion” to stu­dents world­wide. Sebas­t­ian Thrun left Stan­ford to cre­ate Udac­i­ty, and anoth­er Stan­ford spin­off, Cours­era, gained instant trac­tion when it announced in April that it had raised $16 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal and signed part­ner­ships with Prince­ton, Penn and U Michi­gan.

Now comes the lat­est news. MIT has teamed up with its Cam­bridge neigh­bor, Har­vard, to cre­ate a new non prof­it ven­ture, EDX. To date, Har­vard has bare­ly dab­bled in open edu­ca­tion. But it’s now throw­ing $30 mil­lion behind EDX (M.I.T. will do the same), and togeth­er they will offer free dig­i­tal cours­es world­wide, with stu­dents receiv­ing the oblig­a­tory cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery at the end. The EDX plat­form will be open source, mean­ing it will be open to oth­er uni­ver­si­ties. Whether EDX will replace MITx, or sit uncom­fort­ably beside it, we’re not entire­ly sure (though it looks like it’s the for­mer).

Class­es will begin next fall. And when they do, we’ll let you know … and, of course, we’ll add them to our mas­sive col­lec­tion of 450 Free Online Cours­es.

For more infor­ma­tion, you can watch the EDX press con­fer­ence here and read an FAQ here.

via The Har­vard Crim­son and MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

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Coursera Adds Humanities Courses, Raises $16 Million, Strikes Deal with 3 Universities

in Online Courses | April 18th, 2012

Dur­ing the past two months, two ven­tures offer­ing free MOOCS (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) have spun out of Stan­ford. One is Udac­i­ty run by Sebas­t­ian Thrun. And the oth­er is Cours­era, which announced a slew of big news today.

To start with, it raised $16 mil­lion in fund­ing from ven­ture cap­i­tal firms Klein­er Perkins Cau­field & Byers and New Enter­prise Asso­ciates.

Next it announced agree­ments to offer cours­es by Prince­ton, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan (in addi­tion to Stan­ford).

And final­ly it has added human­i­ties cours­es to its upcom­ing fall cur­ricu­lum — a depar­ture from the MOOC norm of only offer­ing cours­es in com­put­er sci­ence & engi­neer­ing. Cours­es include:

The cours­es will get start­ed in the Fall. In the mean­time, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, MIT, Yale, Har­vard, Oxford and beyond.

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Isaac Asimov Imagines Learning in the Electronic Age … and Gets It Quite Right (1989)

in Literature, Online Courses, Sci Fi | April 16th, 2012

In times past, we’ve seen Arthur C. Clarke, the great sci-fi writer, gaze into the future and fore­see our real­i­ty in a most uncan­ny way. Just watch him pre­dict our dig­i­tal­ly-con­nect­ed world in 1964, and then PC com­put­ers, e‑banking and telecom­mut­ing in 1974.

Now it’s time to see whether Isaac Asi­mov, anoth­er sci-fi leg­end, pos­sessed the same pow­ers of pre­science. Above, we’re high­light­ing the sec­ond part of an inter­view taped in 1989. It fea­tures Asi­mov and a younger Bill Moy­ers talk­ing about edu­ca­tion and sci­en­tif­ic progress, and it does­n’t take long for Asi­mov to start describ­ing the rev­o­lu­tion in learn­ing we’re see­ing unfold today. Imag­ine a world where com­put­ers, inter­net con­nec­tions and web­sites let peo­ple learn when they want, wher­ev­er they want, and how they want. Sud­den­ly tech­nol­o­gy democ­ra­tizes edu­ca­tion and empow­ers peo­ple of all ages, and, before too long, “Every­one can have a teacher in the form of access to the gath­ered knowl­edge of the human species.” That’s the world we’re com­ing into, espe­cial­ly dur­ing recent months, thanks to Google, open­course­ware, new-fan­gled MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), the Khan Acad­e­my, and even sites like our own. (Have you seen our lists of 450 Free Cours­es? 300 Free eBooks? 150 Free Text­books? 400 Free Audio Books, etc?). Yes, 23 years ago, Asi­mov pret­ty much knew exact­ly where we would be today, and then some.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

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Yale Introduces Another Seven Free Online Courses, Bringing Total to 42

in Online Courses, Yale | April 11th, 2012

It’s April, which means it’s time for a new batch of Open Cours­es from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. The lat­est release adds anoth­er six cours­es to the mix, bring­ing Yale’s total to 42. We have list­ed the new addi­tions below, and also added them to our ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es. As always, Yale gives you access to their cours­es in mul­ti­ple for­mats. You can gen­er­al­ly down­load their lec­tures via YouTube, iTunes or Yale’s Open Course web site.

  • African Amer­i­can His­to­ry: From Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present — Web Site — Jonathan Hol­loway
  • Finan­cial Mar­kets 2011 — YouTube — Robert Shiller
  • Fresh­man Organ­ic Chem­istry II — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site — J. Michael McBride
  • Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er — YouTube — Wai Chee Dimock
  • Phi­los­o­phy and the Sci­ence of Human Nature — YouTube — iTunes Audio — Web Site — Tamar Gendler
  • The Atmos­phere, the Ocean, and Envi­ron­men­tal Change — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site — Ronald B. Smith
  • The Ear­ly Mid­dle Ages, 284‑1000 — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site — Paul H. Freed­man

Note: Ear­li­er this week, my local NPR sta­tion fea­tured a big con­ver­sa­tion about Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion in High­er Edu­ca­tion. Guests includ­ed Salman Khan (Khan Acad­e­my), Sebas­t­ian Thrun (Udac­i­ty), Anant Agar­w­al (MITx) and Ben Nel­son (The Min­er­va Project). You can lis­ten to their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion here.

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Five Free Courses from Stanford Start This Month

in Online Courses, Stanford | March 6th, 2012

Stan­ford’s big open course ini­tia­tive keeps rolling along. On March 12, three new cours­es will get under­way:

Then, start­ing on March 19, two more will take flight:

The cours­es gen­er­al­ly fea­ture inter­ac­tive video clips; short quizzes that pro­vide instant feed­back; the abil­i­ty to pose high val­ue ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance in the class; and a state­ment of accom­plish­ment at the end of the course.

And, yes, the cours­es are free and now open for enroll­ment.

As always, don’t miss our big list of 425 Free Online Cours­es. It may just be the sin­gle most awe­some page on the web.

Sto­ry via Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News. Algo­rithm image cour­tesy of Big­Stock.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.