Free Online Video Education from Top Universities

pkrumins writes "Over the past few years, some of the world's top universities have started offering free video recordings of their lectures. Being a student, I have enjoyed them and collected them in my bookmarks — until recently I talked to few people, and they did not know about it! So I decided to create a blog about free video education online. I am mostly focusing on physics, mathematics and computer science video lectures."

Comments

Missing In-Class Learning

[neonprimetime]

At the Big 10 University I went to ... we had online videos of the classes available ... but they were mainly designed for off-campus students (not on-campus students). Yet, I noticed in the classes that did have the online videos ... that the in-class attendance was much lower ... and students were missing out on the in-class interaction cause they chose to skip and just watch the vids. I for one, tried those online vids, and didn't like them. I get much more out of the class when I can interact and stop to interrupt the prof if I have a question.

Re:Missing In-Class Learning

[AuMatar]

AMusingly enough, the interrupt the prof part is why I hated lectures- due to questions they always crawled at the speed of the slowest learner. If you were smarter than average (and even in college I was) so much of the time was taken up explaning the same point I got 5 minutes ago that I wanted to smash something. Especially in low level courses where the people who didn't belong in the program weren't weeded out yet. Questions should be for forums/usenet/office hours after class, not during lecture.

Re:Interesting concept

[AuMatar]

Too bad Wikiversity is basicly dead. THe board took a look at a vote where over 2/3 supported creating it, then said "No online courses". Not just no accredited courses (which would be pretty impossible), but no teaching or courses at all. This was followed by the entire movement being co-opted by a bunch of people wanting to turn it into a place for researchers to congregate. Combined with a small subset of wikibookians who just want to see it die because it might take contributors from wikibooks. Right now it has no chance of ever launching- the board doesn't really want it, and has basicly buried it.

They're similarly gutting Wikibooks- Jimbo just came in one day and said anything that isn't a textbook for a college or high school course had to go. All the guides, how-tos, and anything that wasn't in the strictest sense academic. Both resources are being horribly mismanaged by the wikimedia board.