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190 Universities Launch 600 Free Online Courses

Posted by BeauHD on from the knowledge-is-power dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you haven't heard, universities around the world are offering their courses online for free (or at least partially free). These courses are collectively called MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses. In the past six years or so, over 800 universities have created more than 10,000 of these MOOCs. And I've been keeping track of these MOOCs the entire time over at Class Central, ever since they rose to prominence.

In the past four months alone, 190 universities have announced 600 such free online courses. I've compiled a list of them and categorized them according to the following subjects: Computer Science, Mathematics, Programming, Data Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education & Teaching, Health & Medicine, Business, Personal Development, Engineering, Art & Design, and finally Science. The full list is available in the report. If you need help signing up, there's a report for that too.

10 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Never any mod points when I want them :-( by clay_buster · · Score: 2

    How about commenting on the utility effectiveness of the classes instead?

  2. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What is the value of the certificate they provide at the end? Does it hold any weight?

    1. Re:But... by fredrated · · Score: 2

      3 grams?

  3. not just Universities, here is an example by Chalex · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are also many non-university courses available online.

    One example is this excellent free introductory data science course which can be done entirely in your browser. "Chromebook Data Science": https://leanpub.com/universities/set/jhu/chromebook-data-science

  4. A deep thanks for MOOCs by voicofsf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm enormously thankful for the expansion of the MOOCs. I've completed 12 to date this year and am currently enrolled in 7. I've already tagged interest in 6 more. I'm auditing only and all have been free of cost. They are generally extremely polished and equal to in-room courses currently taught in universities. Princeton, Harvard, Penn Law, Illinois Law, U Cal Davis Law have all contributed to extending my knowledge. Professors I've only read about have taken their time to teach online. If these had been available before I started college I could have made better choices in my curriculum. When Professor Charles Fried or Professor Erwin Chemerinsky sign up for these classes, I'm greatly appreciative. Hats off and a deep bow.

  5. This could be a good thing by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some 3 years ago I decided to learn Java, after being an embedded guy for 30 years or so. I learn best by being given problems to solve (I was a math major, learned C/C++ on my own, long story deleted). I could not find a single book, nor course, that would help me. Lots of disjointed tutorials on how to do this, or that. But absolutely nothing to take me from installing java/javac, to learning the libraries (yeah, libraries. They're all C++ like, you'll learn the syntax in a day, but it's the libraries and philosophy of the language that counts.)

    Seems we could put off gassing up an F-35 to fail the latest test to pay for a free course on how to learn Java. Hell, for the price of gassing up an F-35, then paying to maintain that aircraft after a 1 hour flight, they could come up with free courses on 3-4 languages, plus another for OO design.

    Why do I still have to add markup paragraph breaks between paragraphs? I remember when it was normal, but now the "leading" tech site, /., is the only one that requires them. Stuck on stupid.

    1. Re:This could be a good thing by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      If you already know one programming language, why do you need a course or a book to learn another? Just take any program you would have done in C++ and try doing it in Java if you need a problem to solve. Or just pick something that might be interesting to build as a toy project, like a proxy server. You'll probably learn best by doing something and running into problems. Then you can start asking specific questions that are well covered by the disjointed tutorials.

      Almost any book or course on Java is going to be targeted at novices who have little or no programming experience. If you've got multiple decades of experience, these resources are not for you. I'm not even sure if there are any books or courses that would be targeted at someone like you, simply because there aren't a lot of people like you to consume such a resource or who would be interested in paying for it.

    2. Re:This could be a good thing by Snotnose · · Score: 2

      I spent a year writing C programs in Java, that's why.

  6. Re:It's time to stop funding universities by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People who are worthy of pursuing intellectual self-improvement can and will gladly pay their own way.

    Public universities are not funded for the benefit of the students. They are funded for the broad benefit of the public. A thriving research university can bring enormous benefits to a region.

    If you think education is too expensive, you should do a cost-benefit analysis on ignorance.

  7. Class Central is useful by TJHook3r · · Score: 2

    Keeping track of thousands of MOOCs is tricky, and even trickier is finding the good ones. There are some half-assed courses on Udemy for example that are significantly worse than equivalent (but unstructured) offerings on YouTube.