A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Designed for Middle & High School Teachers

in K-12, Online Courses | November 17th, 2020

Update: You can find the video record­ing of the work­shop here.

This past spring, teach­ers and stu­dents every­where got an abrupt intro­duc­tion to online learn­ing. When class­rooms moved online in March, many teach­ers exper­i­ment­ed with online ped­a­gogy for the first time, often with­out much train­ing or sup­port. To help ease this tran­si­tion, the Stan­ford Online High School–an inde­pen­dent high school that oper­ates entire­ly online–launched a free course designed to help teach­ers get com­fort­able teach­ing in this new medi­um. 7,000 teach­ers signed up. To con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing sup­port, an updat­ed ver­sion of this free course will be offered again this week­end.

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” will take place this Sat­ur­day (Novem­ber 21) and Sun­day (Novem­ber 22),  and run from 9:00 am — 11:00 am Pacif­ic time each day. (Update: The lec­tures are now avail­able online.) Designed main­ly for instruc­tors teach­ing grades 7–12, the course can be help­ful for ele­men­tary and col­lege instruc­tors as well. Top­ics cov­ered will include “chal­lenges [such] as stu­dent engage­ment and dis­cus­sion (includ­ing for large groups, break­out rooms, and hybrid groups), effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with stu­dents and par­ents, assess­ment and cur­ricu­lum adap­ta­tion for online ped­a­gogy, and strate­gies for sup­port­ing both stu­dents and your­selves.”

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” is sup­port­ed by Stan­ford Online High School and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You can enroll in the course on the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies web­site here.

If you know any teach­ers who could ben­e­fit from this free course, please feel free to share this post with them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

How to Teach and Learn Phi­los­o­phy Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Col­lec­tion of 450+ Phi­los­o­phy Videos Free Online

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Dr. Fauci’s Lecture from MIT’s Free Course on COVID-19: It’s Now Online

in Biology, Online Courses | November 16th, 2020

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we gave you a heads up on MIT’s free course on COVID-19. As we men­tioned, “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” runs from Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020 through Decem­ber 8, 2020. And it fea­tures a com­bi­na­tion of MIT fac­ul­ty and guest speak­ers, includ­ing Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, cov­er­ing the sci­ence of the pan­dem­ic. Since our orig­i­nal post, Dr. Fau­ci’s pre­sen­ta­tion, “Insights from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” has gone online. You can watch it above. Then find all of the oth­er lec­tures here.

MIT’s course has been added to the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

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A Master List of 1,500 Free Courses From Top Universities: 50,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures to Enrich Your Mind

in Online Courses | October 18th, 2020


For the past 14 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,500 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

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Blockbuster Courses on the U.S. Presidential Election Getting Started at Stanford Continuing Studies This Week

in Online Courses, Stanford | September 21st, 2020


This fall, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies presents 150+ cours­es in the Lib­er­al Arts & Sci­ences, Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, includ­ing two major cours­es on the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Taught by Pamela Kar­lan (Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor) and James Stey­er (CEO, Com­mon Sense Media), Elec­tion 2020: A Panoram­ic View of Amer­i­ca’s Deci­sive Elec­tion will fea­ture a line­up of dis­tin­guished guest speakers–from Bill Clin­ton and Kara Swish­er, to Steve Schmidt, David Plouffe and Andrew Yang. The oth­er course focus­es on Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion: How Sil­i­con Val­ley Tech­nolo­gies Impact Our Elec­tions and Shape Our Democ­ra­cy. Taught by pro­fes­sor Rob Reich and Dutch politi­cian Mari­et­je Schaake, the course will fea­ture vis­its from Roger McNamee, (author of Zucked: Wak­ing Up to the Face­book Cat­a­stro­phe), Alex Sta­mos (For­mer Chief Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer, Face­book), Shoshana Zuboff, (Har­vard author of The Age of Sur­veil­lance Cap­i­tal­ism), Michael McFaul (for­mer ambas­sador to Rus­sia), and more.

These live online cours­es are open to adults. Although the cours­es aren’t free, they’re time­ly and bound to engage. Elec­tion 2020 starts today. Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion starts on Wednes­day. Explore the entire Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies cat­a­logue here.

Note: High school stu­dents can also enroll in both of these elec­tion cours­es. To explore that oppor­tu­ni­ty, fol­low these links:

Elec­tion 2020: A Panoram­ic View of Amer­i­ca’s Deci­sive Elec­tion

Tech­nol­o­gy and the 2020 Elec­tion: How Sil­i­con Val­ley Tech­nolo­gies Impact Our Elec­tions and Shape Our Democ­ra­cy

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MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pandemic, Featuring Anthony Fauci & Other Experts

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health, MIT, Online Courses | September 8th, 2020

Most of us use the terms “coro­n­avirus” and “COVID-19” to refer to the pan­dem­ic that has gone around the world this year. We do know, or can fig­ure out, that the for­mer term refers to a virus and the lat­ter to the dis­ease caused by that virus. But do we know the full name “severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus 2,” or “SARS-CoV­‑2” for short? We will if we take the online course “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic,” which MIT is mak­ing avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic free online. We’ll also learn what makes both the virus and the dis­ease dif­fer­ent from oth­er virus­es and dis­eases, what we can do to avoid infec­tion, and how close we are to an effec­tive treat­ment.

All this is laid out in the course’s first lec­ture by Bruce Walk­er, direc­tor of the Ragon Insti­tute of Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, MIT and Har­vard. Walk­er intro­duces him­self by telling us how he grad­u­at­ed from med­ical school when HIV was at its height in Amer­i­ca, tim­ing that placed him well for a career focused on dead­ly viral dis­eases.

The course’s com­plete line­up of guest lec­tur­ers, all of them list­ed on its syl­labus, includes many oth­er high-pro­file fig­ures in the field of epi­demi­ol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy, vac­cine devel­op­ment, and relat­ed fields: Har­vard’s Michael Mina, Yale’s Akiko Iwasa­ki, the Broad Insti­tute’s Eric Lan­der, and — per­haps you’ve heard of him — the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases’ Antho­ny Fau­ci (find his ses­sion below).

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” began last Tues­day, and its lec­tures, which you’ll find uploaded to this Youtube playlist, will con­tin­ue week­ly until Decem­ber 8th. Even if you have no back­ground in med­i­cine, biol­o­gy, or sci­ence of any kind, don’t be intim­i­dat­ed: as lead­ing pro­fes­sors Richard Young and Facun­do Batista empha­size, this course is meant as an intro­duc­to­ry overview.

And as Bruce Walk­er’s first lec­ture demon­strates, it’s not just open to the gen­er­al pub­lic but geared toward the under­stand­ing and con­cerns of the gen­er­al pub­lic as well. Tak­ing it may not reas­sure you that an end to the pan­dem­ic lies just around the cor­ner, but it will give you clear­er and more coher­ent ways to think about what’s going on. The virus and dis­ease involved are still incom­plete­ly under­stood, after all — but thanks to these and oth­er researchers around the world, get­ting bet­ter under­stood every day.

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Why Fight­ing the Coro­n­avirus Depends on You

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Designed for Middle & High School Teachers (July 13 — 17)

in Education, Online Courses | July 10th, 2020

This fall, many teach­ers (across the coun­try and the world) will be asked to teach online–something most teach­ers have nev­er done before. To assist with that tran­si­tion, the Stan­ford Online High School and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies have teamed up to offer a free online course called Teach­ing Your Class Online: The Essen­tials. Taught by vet­er­an instruc­tors at Stan­ford Online High School (OHS), this course “will help mid­dle and high school instruc­tors move from gen­er­al con­cepts for teach­ing online to the prac­ti­cal details of adapt­ing your class for your stu­dents.” The course is free and runs from 1–3 pm Cal­i­for­nia time, July 13 — 17. You can sign up here.

For any­one inter­est­ed, Stan­ford will also offer addi­tion­al cours­es that give teach­ers the chance to prac­tice teach­ing their mate­r­i­al online and get feed­back from Stan­ford Online High School instruc­tors. Offered from July 20 — July 24, those cours­es cost $95. Click to this page, and scroll down to enroll.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

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Take Free Online Courses on African-American History from Yale and Stanford: From Emancipation, to the Civil Rights Movement, and Beyond

in History, Online Courses, Stanford, Yale | June 18th, 2020

As every Amer­i­can knows, Feb­ru­ary is Black His­to­ry Month. And as every Amer­i­can also knows — if the events of 2020 haven’t warped their sense of time too bad­ly — is isn’t Feb­ru­ary right now. But thanks to online learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy, we all have the free­dom to study any sub­ject we want, as much as we want, when­ev­er we want, irre­spec­tive of the time of year. Sources of inter­net-based edu­ca­tion have pro­lif­er­at­ed in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but long-respect­ed insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing have also got in on the action. Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, for exam­ple, has pro­duced the online course African Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present, whose 25 lec­tures by his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Jonathan Hol­loway you can watch on YouTube, or at Yale’s web site. The first lec­ture appears above.

Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in the spring of 2010, Hol­loway’s course exam­ines “the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the Unit­ed States from 1863 to the present,” involv­ing such chap­ters of his­to­ry as “the end of the Civ­il War and the begin­ning of Recon­struc­tion” and “African Amer­i­cans’ urban­iza­tion expe­ri­ences.”

It also includes lec­tures on the “thought and lead­er­ship of Book­er T. Wash­ing­ton, Ida B. Wells-Bar­nett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mar­cus Gar­vey, Mar­tin Luther King Jr., and Mal­colm X” — all writ­ers and thinkers Open Cul­ture read­ers will have encoun­tered before, but a course like African Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er their lives and work in clear­er con­text and greater detail.

Black his­to­ry has deep­er roots in some parts of the Unit­ed States than oth­ers. But that does­n’t mean the uni­ver­si­ties of the west have noth­ing to offer in this depart­ment: take, for exam­ple, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle, taught by the his­to­ri­an (and edi­tor of MLK’s papers) Clay­borne Car­son. Avail­able to watch on YouTube and iTunes (or right above), its 18 lec­tures deliv­er an intro­duc­tion to “African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the polit­i­cal thought and protest move­ments of the peri­od after 1930, focus­ing on select­ed indi­vid­u­als who have shaped and been shaped by mod­ern African-Amer­i­can strug­gles for free­dom and jus­tice.” Tak­en togeth­er, these online cours­es offer you more than enough mate­r­i­al to hold your own Black His­to­ry Month right now.

Note: Clay Car­son­’s course can also be tak­en as a MOOC on edX. Enroll now in Amer­i­can Prophet: The Inner Life and Glob­al Vision of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. And find the cours­es list­ed above in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Watch Cor­nel West’s Free Online Course on W.E.B. Du Bois, the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Pub­lic Intel­lec­tu­al

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Building Your Resilience: Finding Meaning in Adversity–Take a Free & Timely Course Online

in Health, Online Courses, Psychology | May 8th, 2020

The Great Courses has made avail­able a free and rather time­ly course–Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty. Divid­ed into 24 lec­tures and taught by Mol­ly Birk­holm, the course gets intro­duced with the fol­low­ing text:

Recent research shows that we grow into our best and most joy­ful selves not when we avoid our prob­lems but when we embrace them, con­fi­dent that we are resilient enough to work through them to an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion. Our prob­lems are an impor­tant part of our path.

Resilience is our abil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and men­tal­ly bounce back from adverse cir­cum­stances. With­out it, we would be down for the count every time we ran into a prob­lem. Stuck in traf­fic and late for a meet­ing? It’s your resilience that allows you to make the nec­es­sary phone calls and keep mov­ing for­ward, con­fi­dent that you can han­dle this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion as it evolves. With­out it, you’d make a U‑turn and give up. Recov­er­ing from the flu or recent surgery? It’s your resilience that helps you take care of your­self appro­pri­ate­ly and look for­ward to a bet­ter future. Our capac­i­ty to thrive in life depends direct­ly on our resilience.

Shar­ing her own fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney, as well as the lat­est research by neu­rol­o­gists and psy­chol­o­gists, trau­ma spe­cial­ist Mol­ly Birk­holm shows us how to gauge our cur­rent lev­el of resilience and improve from there. In Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty, you’ll learn how all of our challenges—from every­day stress­es to life-alter­ing traumas—can bring wis­dom and growth. In 17 fas­ci­nat­ing class­es and 7 “hands-on” prac­tice ses­sions, you’ll learn about and expe­ri­ence the process of build­ing the inner calm and clar­i­ty of mind that cre­ate greater resilience. With Ms. Birkholm’s warm and opti­mistic demeanor, you’ll feel her encour­age­ment every step of the way as you move toward build­ing your best and most ful­fill­ing life.

Watch all 24 lec­tures above, or over on YouTube. Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Find more cours­es in The Great Courses cat­a­logue here.

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 Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How to Find Emo­tion­al Strength & Resilience Dur­ing COVID-19: Advice from Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Jack Korn­field, Susan David & Oth­er Experts

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