These seem to have reallytaken off in the last year or two. When once we simply had wikipedia now there are more and more websites offering free online courses, in serious subjects, taught by some very well qualified people. The latest one of these I've heard about is www.coursear.org which is offering a good few science and technology courses. The thing is it's gotten to the point that I can't keep track of them all. Anyone have any ones they'd particularly recommend? My only problem (yeah, a problem with free) is that the humanities and business subjects are lagging behind the science and technology subjects in courses available.
This is what I use: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm MIT courses put up online, including syllabi, lecture notes, and occasional videos. Availability varies, but the price is right, and it's self-guided. Plus, it has a surprising amount of liberal arts/humanities stuff.
There's always the Khan Academy. Obviously they won't help if you're looking for college credits, but, if you're in it for the knowledge, their courses are free and generally pretty excellent.
I've just started the CourseRa Python course. I looked at all the videos and did the two quizzes tonight. It took me seven attempts to get the second quiz to 100% because of one question. And it wasn't because I didn't know something, it was blatantly because I was being thick (if you want to be critical) or because of cultural confusion (if you want to be generous.) They were asking you to work out an equation through code, and then post the "Maximum number." I thought maximum number was some mathematical phrase for the answers given back, not that they just meant only answer with the biggest number. So yeah, seven times to get that right. I was being thick.
I had no idea there were free online courses. Wow. I'm going to keep an eye on this, I'm a perpetual student. :D
So I went and looked at it, and for a lot of courses, it really is just a syllabus with links to Amazon to buy the books. Which honestly, there's something to be said for that. If you don't have any expertise in a field, having someone with that expertise tell you which books to read is going to be a huge leg up. Of course, I've been doing that for years by just going to various college sites and seeing what books they use for a class, and then grabbing the ones that are the most widely used, but it's still nice to see it formalized and offered up explicitly and intentionally for non-students.
I was hoping to find a decent "Accounting 101" type course somewhere. MIT has a couple with powerpoints and exams, but without any lecture notes to accompany the powerpoint, or a textbook, I can't make very good use of it. Anywhere else I should be looking? My Google-fu just keeps pointing me to websites with "free trials" that require credit card info.
Udacity is the big one that's missing from the list here so far. They're a bit strange in that they're not linked to any existing offline university. Instead they're trying to be a truly online one, complete with certified exams that they will charge money for. For my part, I'm mostly doing Coursera stuff. I've just finished the Introduction to Finance course (University of Michigan) and the Algorithms I course (Princeton). Like U.S. Millie, I'm currently doing the Introduction to Python class, but it's too easy for me. I'm looking forward to Algorithms II in November.
As a heads-up for any Europa Universalis and Empire: Total War fans, "The Modern World: Global History since 1760" has been running for a couple of weeks on Coursera and is well worth a look. Meanwhile, the archives of "A History of the World Since 1300" will be up for a few more days (until the 27th), and while the first few lectures aren't the most engaging - I suspect Professor Adelman was learning as he went along - things pick up once he hits the 1600s (circa lecture 6). Worth saving the lectures to your hard drive if you might be interested.
