I came across Coursera the other day and thought it was pretty cool. It has over 100 undergraduate level courses (the equivalent of modules on a degree course) that are taught by professors from real universities (Stanford, Princeton etc) with video lectures, assignments and even exams, and it's totally free. Some of them are exactly what enrolled (paying) students get at the given university. Some offer signed certificates, but I'm not sure how much weight they'd carry. In terms of acquiring knowledge/education, it seems like a pretty good deal though.

I signed up to one to see what it's like, but it doesn't start for another week. If anyone's already done one, I'd be interested to hear your impression.

I also came across Udacity which has 14 courses that you can do any time, and don't seem to be affiliated with any institution. Coursera courses start on a fixed date and run for a number of weeks, like a regular uni course would.

You're forgetting the 2 most important pioneers in free online
education: MIT Open Courseware and Khan Academy.

chamcham Wrote:You're forgetting the 2 most important pioneers in free online
education: MIT Open Courseware and Khan Academy.

Agreed! I've learned a lot from MIT Courseware lectures especially when I needed to brush up on chemistry.

There are Open Coursewares from other universities but MIT has way more subjects. I like to look at CAL and UCLA Open Coursewares too.

You may be interested in what this person is doing - http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/

chamcham Wrote:You're forgetting the 2 most important pioneers in free online
education: MIT Open Courseware and Khan Academy.

OpenCourseWare is actually the first one I came across, but it seemed to be just PDF-based. I thought the video lecture/assignment structure of Coursera would be interesting. It's possible to interact with other people on the course too, and it seems that the assignments/exams get graded somehow, which I don't quite get because tens of thousands of people sign up to a single course...

shinsen Wrote:You may be interested in what this person is doing - http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/

That does look interesting. Maybe I'll return to the MIT site after finishing 10 Days to Faster Reading

Javizy Wrote:OpenCourseWare is actually the first one I came across, but it seemed to be just PDF-based. I thought the video lecture/assignment structure of Coursera would be interesting.

Depends on the class. Some MIT OpenCourseWare classes have videos. For example, the Computer Science Algorithms class.

chamcham Wrote:You're forgetting the 2 most important pioneers in free online
education: MIT Open Courseware and Khan Academy.

Stanford to has an open courseware. There was 10 courses on YouTube at first (with their materials) then they made three courses that you can enroll in and must hand homework and exams at certain times, and receive a certificate after finishing. I registered in Machine Learning, it wasn't bad, but the explanations were over simplified that made me too annoyed and left at about lecture 9, not to mention that I found the topic boring. I've watched some of the Introduction to Robotics course given by Ousama Khatib to supplement the one I was taking at uni at the time, but I found his explanations to be non-rigorous at all, so it wasn't helping.
What I found to be fantastic are the Programming Methodology and Intro to Linear Dynamical Systems (given by Stephen Boyd, one of the most eminent lecturers) courses, both lecturers are excellent, and break the boring class atmosphere. Boyd brings up the most interesting related topics even if it's not necessary to understand them, he provokes deep thinking and understanding of the material, for the interested student.

There's also that Indian institute that has a lot of courses of which many are interesting for me, but I couldn't get most of their accent!

Stanford's OCW website: http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Edit:

shinsen Wrote:You may be interested in what this person is doing - http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/

Wow, CS students take Multi-variable Calculus, Signals and Systems, Circuits, and Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing??! These are engineering courses (except calc) and not of the easy type, MIT never stops to amaze me -_-;

Any sites that have free training for MS Excel and other basic programs? Sure it's not comparable to something like a course in physics but would still like a class format.

Quote:CS students take Multi-variable Calculus, Signals and Systems, Circuits, and Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing??!

I thought this was what CS was about :S

dizmox Wrote:

Quote:CS students take Multi-variable Calculus, Signals and Systems, Circuits, and Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing??!

I thought this was what CS was about :S

You're right. CS is more than just software engineering, but that seems to be the emphasis these days. You'd be surprised how many CS students have never opened their computer before.

These are great! I guess I'll add my own.
The "Lifehacker University" posts that Lifehacker does are really good for learning about interesting courses. Open Culture's list of free online courses is really good as well. Oh, and Academic Earth is a more user friendly Open Courseware search.

dizmox Wrote:

Quote:CS students take Multi-variable Calculus, Signals and Systems, Circuits, and Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing??!

I thought this was what CS was about :S

Here, Computer Engineering students study these course, but CS students don't go into engineering realm, and our educational systems are taken from the west.

chamcham Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:

Quote:CS students take Multi-variable Calculus, Signals and Systems, Circuits, and Introduction to Communication, Control, and Signal Processing??!

I thought this was what CS was about :S

You're right. CS is more than just software engineering, but that seems to be the emphasis these days. You'd be surprised how many CS students have never opened their computer before.

That set of courses sounds more like CE, but that's what makes them MIT, I guess. I think even English majors at MIT are required to do a pretty heavy math/science load.

Related:

iTunes U has a collection of OCW from many universities (including UCLA, CAL aka UC Berkeley if you don't know it as "CAL" and MIT). You can check it out in iTunes or download the app to your iPhone/ iPad.

http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/