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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."
Most universities allow contact through e-mail, chat or forum/BBS. So you can easily as questions if you miss something. Also, wheres the rewind button in a real class. How about when you are studying and need a refresh? This is a very viable alternative to first and second year courses. Most questions are asked during tutorial anyways. In high grades however class sizes drop alot and being in person is more effective even if isn't as cost effective.
my kids are 6 and 8 now. I wish I had access to top univeristy lectures when I was in high school. it would have kept me from being bored out of my head by the drivel spoon fed in public school.
I expect that the mass, nearly-free communication from the Internet will significantly shift our assumptions about education and the ages at which people get different levels of training.
Right now, people are kept out of the professional workplace as long as possible and it has been increasing over time (subtle pressures to reduce competition from young people mostly drives this). more degrees, etc mean you are 22-25 ish before you are treated as "acceptible" in the professional workplace. This is completely ABSURD biologically, where one can compete as an adult (strictly biologically) at about age 16-18. Most primiltive humans had "adluthood" rituals even younger.
With widely available content, advanced degrees will mean less - I mean if you can walk into an engineering firm at age 17 and have taken and understood all the MIT classes on structural engineering - OF COURSE they will hire you in a second. They would pay you less maybe than a EE major, but who cares, the 17 yo will do it in a second. This is mirrored in current higher education and funding too. Most professors are more multidisciplinary (belonging to mutliple depts.) and funding is becoming more collaborative (like the NIH roadmap). THe result is lower importance on specific disciplines.
For my own kids, the world will change so much by the time they will be ready for college, I'm not really thinking the same rules will apply to them when they get to be 17 or 18.
We'll see....
I partially disagree with you. By going to lectures, I was able to spend the rest of my time reading other materials not covered in lectures or playing StarCraft. I noticed on average it took me twice the amount of time to pick up the materials from the textbooks compared to the same materials presented in the live lectures. But that's just me. Everyone have their own learning style, and for me lectures were very useful part of college.
I agree with you the time to soak up knowledge from books was also very useful. Lectures allow me to spend less time on the materials covered and more time on materials not covered.