As The New York Times noted in a 2007 profile, Walter Lewin long had a cult following at MIT. But when his free courses went viral on the web (find them in the Physics section of our big collection of Free Online Courses), the physics prof became an “international Internet guru,” the first star of the open course movement. It’s a sign of his stardom that someone made a mashup of Lewin’s “best lines” (drawn, not spoken) from his Classical Mechanics course. For more great physics videos, don’t miss these items:
It happens at least a few times a day. Students look through our list of 400 Free Online Courses, and ask us whether they can get a certificate for taking a class. And, unfortunately, our answer has been no — no, you can’t. But that may be about to change.
Earlier this fall, Stanford launched a highly-publicized series of free courses that offer students something novel: the ability to take tests and receive a “statement of accomplishment” from the instructor — though not the school itself — if they pass the class. (Stanford will launch 14 more courses starting in January and February. Click link for details.)
Now, MIT wants to up the ante on the certification of free courses. Starting next spring, the university, already famous for its OpenCourseWare project, will launch MITx, an e‑learning initiative that will offer certificates to students demonstrating mastery of free MIT courses. According to a new set of FAQs, the certificates won’t bear MIT’s name. Rather, “MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within [MITx] that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.” The courses will be free; the certificates will cost just a “modest” sum. It’s all a big step in the right direction.
UPDATE: You can find a list of free courses offering certificates from great universities here.
Two weeks ago, we mentioned that Stanford will be rolling out seven new courses in its experiment with online learning. Fast forward to today, and yet another seven courses have been added to the winter lineup, bringing the total to 14.
Immediately below, you’ll find the latest additions. All of these courses feature interactive video clips; short quizzes that provide instant feedback; the ability to pose high value questions to Stanford instructors; and feedback on your overall performance in the class.
Courses start in January and February. Enroll today for free. And, if something doesn’t pique your interest below, don’t miss our big list of 400 Free Online Courses.
David Harvey, an important social theorist and geographer, has got the right idea. Take what you know. Teach it in the classroom. Capture it on video. Then distribute it to the world. Keep it simple, but just do it.
Harvey is now making available 26 hours of lectures, during which he gives a close reading of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). This work, often considered to be Marx’s masterpiece, is where he elaborated a critique of capitalism and laid the groundwork for an ideology that took the 20th century by storm. Harvey is no stranger to this text. He has taught this class for over 40 years now, both in universities (Johns Hopkins and CUNY) and in the community as well.
The first lecture, preceded by an introductory interview lasting roughly six minutes, appears above. The rest of the lectures can be accessed via Harvey’s web site, YouTube, and iTunes. Also, we have placed the course in our collection of Free Online Courses, which keeps on growing. Find it under the Economics section.
UPDATE: David Harvey is looking for volunteers to translate his lectures into 36 languages. If you want to help you, you can get started here.
This fall, Stanford launched a highly-publicized experiment in online learning. The university took three of its most popular computer science courses and made them freely available to the world. Each course features interactive video clips; short quizzes that provide instant feedback; and the ability to pose high value questions to Stanford instructors. The response? It has been nothing short of amazing. One course alone (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) pulled in more than 58,000 enrollments.
Starting in January and February 2012, Stanford will offer seven new courses, and they’re all open for enrollment today. Here’s the new list (and don’t forget to browse through our collection of 400 Free Online Courses):
Note: The free lectures by The Great Courses have been taken offline. But no worries, you can find over 33,000 hours of free lectures from top universities in our collection, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities. They’ll keep you busy for years to come.
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With Labor Day behind us, it’s officially time to head back to school. That applies not just to kids, but to you. No matter what your age, no matter where you live, no matter what your prior level of education, you can continue deepening your knowledge in areas old and new. And it has never been easier. All you need is a computer or smart phone, an internet connection, some free time, and our free educational media collections. They’re available 24/7 and constantly updated:
Free Online Courses: Right now, you can download free courses (some in video, some in audio) created by some of the world’s leading universities — Stanford, Oxford, Yale, Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT and others. The courses cover pretty much every subject — from philosophy, literature and history, to physics, computer science, engineering and psychology. The collection features about 400 courses in total. And while you can’t take these courses for credit, the amount of personal enrichment offered by these lectures is endless.
Free Textbooks: Another tool for the lifelong learner. This collection brings together roughly 150 free textbooks authored by professors (and some high school teachers) across the globe. The collection will particularly benefit those interested in deepening their knowledge in economics, computer science, mathematics, physics and biology.
Free Language Lessons: Ours is an increasingly globalized world, and it certainly pays to know more than one language. With the free audio lessons listed here, you can learn the basics of Spanish, French and Italian (the languages traditionally taught in American schools). Or you can start boning up on Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages spoken by the new world powers. Taken together, you can Learn 40 Languages for Free.
Free Audio Books: This free collection gives you the ability to download audio versions of important literary works. During your downtime, you can listen to short stories by Isaac Asimov, Raymond Carver, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick. Or you can settle into longer works by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Friedrich Nietzsche and James Joyce.
Free eBooks: Once again, it’s free literary works. But this time you can download e‑texts to your computer or digital reader. Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Gertrude Stein, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust and Kurt Vonnegut. They’re all on the list. And so too are The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series of enduring works.
Great Science Videos: This list pulls together some of our favorite science videos on the web. It features about 125 videos, covering astronomy & space travel, physics, psychology and neuroscience, religion, technology and beyond.
Intelligent YouTube Sites: Have you ever wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube? This list will give you a start. It features over 100 YouTube channels that deliver high quality educational content. Along similar lines, you may want to visit our collection of Intelligent Video Sites. Same concept but applied to sites on the web.
Cultural Icons: If you’ve ever wanted to see great thinkers, artists and writers speaking on video in their own words, this list is for you. It has Borges and Bowie, Coltrane and Coppola, Ayn Rand and Noam Chomsky, Tolstoy and Thomas Edison, among others. 275 cultural icons in total.
Free Movies Online: What better way to get a cultural education than to watch some free cinematic masterpieces, including 15 films with Charlie Chaplin, 22 early films by Alfred Hitchcock, 25 Westerns with John Wayne, and a number of Soviet classics by Andrei Tarkovsky. The list of 400+ films goes on. And so does your cultural education.…
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Stephen B. Smith, a political science professor at Yale University since 1984, has made available a 24-lecture course, Introduction to Political Philosophy, which covers Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Tocqueville.
His approach is highly literary. In his Republic lectures, for instance, he spends a good chunk of the time discussing the metaphors and characters involved. One of Smith’s major concerns is what citizenship amounts to. The lecture above is on Plato’s “Apology,” and while this may be Plato’s most famous work (with its dictum that “The unexamined life is not worth living”), it’s less about political philosophy than about the virtuous life. Smith sees these topics as intimately related, and in his closing lecture, he gives a defense of patriotism, saying that in the ivy league environment, expressing an interest in patriotism is like confessing an interest in child pornography.
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Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
