Photo: wohnai

Over the last couple years an exciting new trend has emerged amongst universities across the country – they are providing courses online for free! Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia, UCLA, and John Hopkins are just some of the schools that have lecture videos of entire courses online.

Why the heck are these schools doing this?
It is the free information movement. Just like there was a free love movement in the 1970’s, there is a similar free knowledge movement in the early part of the new century. Wikipedia is the epitome – its free information has become a part of the way we research just about everything. Another manifestation of this is the huge open source software movement providing free software to the masses. Examples are the Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox web browser, and Android phone operating system. It is a cultural and economic phenomenon that deserves much more attention than a few sentences, but there is not room in this post so I will refrain – just be sure to take advantage of it!

What exactly are they offering?
It varies widely from school to school and even class to class. The organization OpenCourseWare currently has 200 schools with 13,000 courses offered online – some just have the lecture videos, while others also have the assignments and exams complete with solutions. Beyond what is posted you are on your own – there are no help resources such as teacher assistants or other class members to contact.

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