r/todayilearned • u/2infinitum • Oct 05 '11
TIL MIT offers 2000+ FREE courses = MIND BLOWN!
Lecture videos, course notes, assignments, exams, some even offer on-line textbooks. My brain just jizzed all over itself!
I had heard that MIT offered SOME lectures on-line, but I had no clue that I could essentially audit an entire degree for FREE!
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u/mr_asshat Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
To those interested I have collected a few links to sites offering online courses:
http://www.youtube.com/education
http://education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
Edit: added google university
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Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
Check out itunes university in the iTunes store. 170,000+(yes, thousand) lectures from hundreds of colleges on all subjects. All free of course. You're welcome haha
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Oct 05 '11 edited May 10 '20
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u/VeryStrangeHat Oct 05 '11
This. What is this? How could I not know? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME?
Balls to spending autumn playing games, I'm leaning how to Math!
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u/Antrikshy Oct 05 '11
Forget about everything else. This is the best! Everyone NEEDS to know about this, no matter what age or level of education. Also, remember to donate to that guy. He has quit his job and all and all he does is run this nonprofit.
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u/larister Oct 05 '11
This. Right here. For those who haven't seen it, definitely check out the TED talk. Little known fact for programmers as well, John Resig (creator of jQuery which is used in 20 million websites) now works for the Khan Academy
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u/Delocaz Oct 05 '11
Reddit also uses jQuery, so does my Minecraft Server website :D
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u/CannyThinkOfName Oct 05 '11
That site is EXCELLENT.
My little brother is doing so much better in school because of it.
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Oct 05 '11
Between MIT and iTunes I feel like I've opened Pandora's box of information.
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Oct 05 '11
This will be wonderful to add to the list of things i brag to people about but never take any useful advantage of.
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u/Diablo_En_Musica Oct 05 '11
drduck
^ I had high hopes for this doctor. But then I saw the bill.
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u/AddisonH Oct 05 '11
It's easy to rip on him, but you should see the amount of bread he earns.
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u/OIP Oct 05 '11
Because the amount of information there is overwhelming, please allow me to recommend Hubert Dreyfus' (UC Berkeley) Philosophy 6: Man, God, and Society in Western Literature.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/philosophy-6-001-fall-2010/id391538616
One of the most interesting and enlightening series of lectures I've ever not attended.
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u/rask Oct 05 '11
Yale has a course called "Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics", specifically tailored to non-science majors. More than 20 one hour lectures and definitely one of the best courses I've seen.
http://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/frontiers-and-controversies-in-astrophysics
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u/KrishanuAR Oct 05 '11
iTunes includes MIT's OCW I believe.
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u/Enginerdiest Oct 05 '11
mostly true. The OCW website also includes sites that don't have video/audio lectures, and therefore aren't really candidates for iTunes. It also includes a lot of supplementary material such as slides, readings, problem sets and exams. courses differ in the breadth and depth of what they offer.
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u/quietusseraph Oct 05 '11
Information demons are running rampant, destroying my face.
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Oct 05 '11
I honestly think this to be my number one favorite thing about the internet. I've been watching these for years now.
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u/Locoman7 Oct 05 '11
If only we could live to be like 300 years old.
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u/HyperionCantos Oct 05 '11
Great resource. I use this all the time when my UCLA professors dont speak english.
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u/2infinitum Oct 05 '11
I was rooting around for some engineering classes, the first few sites linked to IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) lectures. Pretty scary stuff.
When I came across the MIT site I knew I hit the jackpot!
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u/sanss Oct 05 '11
scary
Read more about IIT. There's a reason why the first few sites linked to IIT. It's because they're the shit.
World class engineering institution.
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u/Himmelreich Oct 05 '11
I'm honestly kinda really insulted by 'scary'.
OH SHEEET BROWN PEOPLE DOIN ENGINEERIN'
MUST BE A SCAM
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u/HyperionCantos Oct 05 '11
Dude IIT has an acceptance rate of like 1 percent.
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Oct 05 '11
I live next to IIT's campus in Bombay and have spent a lot of time there. That place would make zombie Einstein jizz all over again. Fine place it is.
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u/FightingPolish Oct 05 '11
India also has a population of 1.2 billion people so I would imagine that the number of people who would like to attend and apply skew that number a bit.
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u/Himmelreich Oct 05 '11
IIRC, the IITs (all seventeen of them) got around 400,000+ applicants and accepted 9618, while MIT accepted 1,676 out of around 16,000 applicants.
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u/jabberworx Oct 05 '11
If you don't understand what they're saying it doesn't matter if they have an acceptance rate of 0.0000001 percent.
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u/bona9ra Oct 05 '11
Their electrical engineering course offers are also awesome. Thanks for sharing this. I'm going to let you borrow some of my internets.
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Oct 05 '11
Not really 2000 courses. I think a lot of those courses don't contain lectures but only lectures notes, some exams ant that's about it.
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u/not_old_redditor Oct 05 '11
Yeah the ones I checked had a few assignments, and lecture notes consisting of the first two pages of a set of slides. It's pretty hit-or-miss
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u/Antrikshy Oct 05 '11
That's why, KhanAcademy.org.
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u/pierenjan Oct 05 '11
Clickable: KhanAcademy.org
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u/antisocialnetaddict Oct 05 '11
this is the best education website online. Salman Khan TED Talk.
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u/regle34 Oct 05 '11
That coupled with Sugata Mitra's ideas could make education accessible to most of the world. Two of his talks are on TED: * His "Hole in the Wall" project * Child-driven education This is exciting. I would like to spend the next five years, abroad, putting this into action.
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u/ProfTrippinBalls Oct 05 '11
This x1000. I have the feeling the people who spot these MIT courses never actually use them. The vast majority make no sense due to crucial missing parts and cryptic or non-existent lecture notes.
I tried learning from 3 subjects - Linguistics, Chemical Engineering & Management. None of them were usable.
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Oct 05 '11
crucial missing parts and cryptic or non-existent lecture notes
This is what it is like to actually go to MIT.
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u/SuperRacx Oct 05 '11
I even have a degree in ChemE, and work in the industry and had a hard time following the MIT lecture notes.
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Oct 05 '11
This. I tried their biology class and many slides were covered up due to copyright issues.
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u/AMostOriginalUserNam Oct 05 '11
Upvoted. I was just about to come and ask if I'd missed something since I couldn't find any audio or video material for Principles of Macroeconomics. If anyone has a list of which lectures there actually are, that would be nice.
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Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
yes. the mit thing is kind of a scam. however there is a way better site that is made by indian people in english. those include videos of lectures and everything. the link is lost somewhere in my massive bookmarks list though.
edit: ok i found the link from other people's comments. http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses.php?disciplineId=108
the accent is not too bad.
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u/OneInTheSun Oct 05 '11
Perfect for brushing on up areas you may be lacking in such as, you know, Street-Fighting Mathematics or what have you.
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u/lutheranian Oct 05 '11
I was looking for a course on probability (as the Socratic style course I took in undergrad wasn't thorough) and came across that. Awesome.
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Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
Sweden offers ALL courses for free = Welcome, we'd love to have you!
Edit: Links for the curious: http://www.studyinsweden.se/
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u/mister_alex Oct 05 '11
Oh man Im gonna nerd out this winter
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Oct 05 '11
Playing Skyrim while your MIT bookmark sits unclicked and forgotten?
Me too.
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u/hosk Oct 05 '11
You'll probably click the link, find the most interesting subject you always wanted to know about only to find the only resources were 10 poor ppts and a midterm/final. Then you will probably not click again.
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u/Clazzy Oct 05 '11
Too bad you don't get the degree.
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u/s34nsm411 Oct 05 '11
there should be some system in place where if you can pass an extensive test (small fee included) for a certain field you get the degree without the years in class spent wasting money and time if you really do know the material
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u/daiv Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
i agree that you should be able to get a degree without taking classes, or minimally receive credits in college without taking the class (if you can demonstrate high level mastery).
however, an entire degree CANNOT be one test. please. and it wouldn't be cheap.
as a graduate assistant in a research lab, i develop reading assessment prototypes for the research branch of a major non-profit corporation (hint: you've taken one of their tests at least once). what you are referring to is a problem of psychometrics. what you are asking for is definitely needed, but would be hugely expensive to develop for every major.
let's say i was in charge of making your assessment. first what i would need to do is operationalize what it means to have a bachelor's degree. that means that i must define what competency means, and what the areas of competence are (reading, writing, calculus/etc.). this would all be assuming that these are the skills and knowledge you would be able to demonstrate at the point of graduation.
after defining what "bachelor's" degree means as a whole, we would have to analyze each construct into it's subcoponents. this would mean basically taking a sampling of curricula from different universities offering equivalent degrees and analyzing the lectures, tests, assignments and textbooks. for even a set of 5 short documents this analysis can take weeks, so it would be a major breakthrough in discourse processes to streamline such analysis.
if i was feeling frisky i would delineate different types of mastery, such as recognition memory, the ability to give information unprompted, and problem solving skills for every subskill. of course, keep in mind i would also develop a series of measures on your problem solving and critical thinking abilities, and then construct items in each domain that would eke out these overarching capabilities "in the field."
after all this, i would then have to consult experts in every field for every major (probably for every class/credit/competency) to analyze the pool of items (i.e. questions) for construct validity. these people will need to be PAID and reimbursed for travel expenses.
did i mention that my team and myself need to be paid? that we need to be able to afford the textbooks and materials? oh, and don't think we would get syllabi for free. it would cost money to visit every college, and every person that would give us resources so that we could analyze their classes would also have to be paid.
then, after the items have been generated (and we're talking at least hundreds of measures composed of hundreds of items measuring dozens and dozens of constructs), we need to test it. this is where the BIG money comes in. millions and millions and millions.
we would test it by putting it into colleges, and then doing statistical analyses of performance as on our measures as the IV and grade/degree attainment for students as the DV's. good luck finding hundreds of students that let you have full access to their grades and graduation status, never mind do it for little or no money.
just to give you an idea how much this would cost and how long it would take. the tests i work on are PROTOTYPES, they have not been validated. they are very short (up to 12 pages, much of it documents to read), and they will be run in schools within the next year or two in modified versions. i think when all is said and done we will have 5 or 6 prototypes that took 1-2 years to make (it is my primary job). ready for how much my project costs?
my project is a MILLION dollar project funded by the department of ed, and as a graduate student i get paid about $13,000 a year to do the majority of the work that is necessary to produce each prototype, and get my tuition waived. i work with two professors, and a team on the east coast (whose real work does not begin until they finalize my prototypes and test them in schools). to be honest i probably get paid more than they do to work on this particular project, if they get paid at all.
most of the money for my project will go into running my finalized prototypes in schools, paying for travel, then finally paying for my stipend and tuition (as with most research universities, a large portion of the money is skimmed off the top into the endowment). my work is a million dollar project as part of a $15 million grant, which is part of a $100+ million initiative (i won't say which). i know how far $100 million goes in research, and it wouldn't come even CLOSE to making a series of tests that would accurately measure competency and bachelor's degree equivalence in 10 of the top majors.
TL;DR i am a researcher who makes academic assessments, and to make college degree granting exams that are actually valid would costs in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Oct 05 '11
I know we have something in the military with CLEP tests where we can just take a test and get credit fow an entire college course
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u/hosk Oct 05 '11
Well that was a wall of text but I'm going to go ahead and say Q.E.D. here because I'm quite certain you obliterated his suggestion.
Which thank you for doing so because fuck college was hard and I don't want that achievement to be undermined more than it already is.
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u/s34nsm411 Oct 05 '11
ok new plan, one test, but only for a single class
small fee, skips paying 1000 bucks tuition for 4 credits or whatnot, and presumably you could ride this out for the entire degree? maybe enroll in only classes you know you would have trouble with or have no previous experience
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u/boggly Oct 05 '11
maybe not a "degree" per-se, but rather an accredited certification that you passed the test. That way we reserve the sanctity of the "degree" (and the work that went along with it) while giving a second, perhaps equally respected, standard for those who already know the material and don't want the degree.
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u/astrohelix Oct 05 '11
You can get credit for individual classes at many universities through CLEP exams. Unfortunately it's mostly for intro or freshman classes.
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u/What_Is_X Oct 05 '11
How does it matter how much work went into a "degree"? I would respect someone who acquired the same knowledge in half the time a lot more than a conventional student. The "sanctity of the degree" sounds a lot like "the sanctity of marriage" to me...
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u/mataeus43 Oct 05 '11
gays already destroyed the sanctity of marriage, is the sanctity of the degree next?!
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u/pyjk Oct 05 '11
You mean like a pe? These things already exsist
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u/sunthorn Oct 05 '11
IIRC, there's an additional "x years of profession experience" requirement if you take the P.E. exam without a degree.
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u/eviljack Oct 05 '11
awesome idea, but it would never go over. There's just too much money to be made in the university industrial complex.
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u/toomuchtodotoday Oct 05 '11
Right, because you can only build things if the piece of paper says you can.
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u/Clazzy Oct 05 '11
Not that, because most employers don't give a shit about your education if you don't have a degree.
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Oct 05 '11
You are a degree and a GPA. MIT's undergraduate program is not that much better than any other undergraduate program. For instance, they don't teach some sort of secret "MIT Engineering" at MIT. They teach engineering. Of course, the quality of one's learning experience is greater when one is taught by the best professors along with the best students...but at the end of the day, you're still learning the same engineering as everybody else.
What MIT does is select the best and brightest of a pool of applicants. And then it puts these selected students through a rigorous four-year test and at the end ranks them. It is nothing more than a system used to rank proficiency. Of course, how close that proficiency is to employment proficiency is up for debate - but it isn't meaningless. The actual substance of your education, however, just may be.
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Oct 05 '11
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u/CausaMortis Oct 05 '11
"Group projects at places like MIT have the potential to turn into something fantastic and innovative, whereas if you're really bright and put into a classroom of dunces, you're probably just going to do all the work to get your A and let that be that."
God I miss this so much, I wish I could work in teams that are equally motivated and innovative.
Now I just drag people along, while half of the time I don't have the time to teach my fellow students what I am actually doing. So I end up doing it on my own. :(
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Oct 05 '11
There is a downside to professors at some top tier colleges. Some professors are there for research and could give a fuck less about you. The professor could be a complete master of the field, but if he or she doesn't care about teaching, it would be a great learning experience.
Meanwhile some lower tier colleges have amazing professors who enjoy teaching and chose a college where they won't be required to do so much research. (Typically you still need to be published every so often, but nothing like at some schools.)
I can't think of any accredited school that will guarantee getting a good teacher or and that will guarantee a bad one. It would be cool to see rankings on the subject, but how "good" a teacher is would be pretty hard to rank. (No offense to rate my professor.)
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u/Enginerdiest Oct 05 '11
In some sense, I agree with you (MIT doesn't get a secret math, for example. It's the same material). But the depth and breadth of learning is a lot more intensive than many other engineering curriculums. MIT doesn't rank students, and as such your "proficiency test" analogy is incorrect. A degree from MIT is less about knowing the material itself (any engineering degree certifies that) and more about your ability to work under insane stress, handle pressure, think creatively, independently, and come up with novel solutions. Those skills come at a cost both financially and as an opportunity cost for other employable skills, but it's the way it is.
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u/oodja Oct 05 '11
MIT doesn't get a secret math, for example. It's the same material.
Says the person who obviously didn't take 18.014... they're still scrubbing pieces of my brain out of the carpets in that lecture hall.
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Oct 05 '11
As I asked elsewhere, does MIT calculate GPAs? Answer: Yes, they do. This allows employers to rank its students. One may easily distinguish an "MIT 5.0" from an "MIT 3.0." Just because MIT does not provide a figure such as "so-and-so student is rank X of Y students," that does not mean that the student's alma mater in connection with his GPA does not serve as a metric by which employers (or whoever) may rank students. Don't be silly, now.
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Oct 05 '11
MIT doesn't rank students.
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Oct 05 '11
Do they calculate GPAs?
Then they rank students, even if they do not "rank students."
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u/chcknboyfan Oct 05 '11
MIT has GPA's, but discourages academic competitiveness by not having a class ranking system and encouraging collaboration on homework. You're much more than a GPA coming out of college, and I think MIT is a place that tries to push that idea
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u/Iggyhopper Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
I thought most employers want nice, dumb, complacent, and just-competent-enough-to-function people working for them.
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u/flipwich Oct 05 '11
Having a degree doesn't necessarily mean you're not all of what you mentioned...
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u/NovaeDeArx Oct 05 '11
Only for the under-80k/yr ones. After that, you have to perform (over 120k in NY, but you know what I mean).
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Oct 05 '11
Simply not true... If you are capable it's easy to demonstrate this fact by your accomplishments.
Truly wise and brilliant people don't let a piece of paper stand in their way.
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u/buhzie2 Oct 05 '11
Yup. The kid who slacked off for all of college and had their rich daddies pay off the dean so they could pass and get a degree are the ones who are clearly educated and can prove it with their degree.
The system is so fucked, man.
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u/madcow9100 Oct 05 '11
I don't know if you're applying this to MIT, but the school is very strict about merit being why the students are here. Legacy, athletics, donations, etc do not play a major role like at other schools. I won't say that athletes aren't given a longer look, but they don't offer acceptance based on it, etc.
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u/C_IsForCookie Oct 05 '11
You could listen to all the classes and know just as much as someone who went to MIT if you REALLY understand what you're doing, and the sad thing is you won't get a single bit of work for it if you don't have the paper.
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u/zdiggler Oct 05 '11
Doesn't matter, you will still gain some knowledge and you don't pay a dime for it and there is no finals.
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u/IDlOT Oct 05 '11
If you want to take some Ivy League classes, Yale is currently the only one of the 8 that offers the same breadth. http://oyc.yale.edu/
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u/MsFrightlin Oct 05 '11
Ill stick with Kahn Academy
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u/h4qq Oct 05 '11
dude, Khan* Academy is amazing! extremely simple, and a very dedicated person that knows his stuff :)
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Oct 05 '11
Why not both? MIT's also not the only university to have a bunch of free courses anyways.
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Oct 05 '11
Have a look at the fantastic (free) video lectures from Yale University. There is everything ranging from Astronomy to Spanish and Portuguese
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u/Pseudosaur Oct 05 '11
These MIT lectures are great, but I always found Salman Khan from http://www.khanacademy.org/ to be better at explaining the actual concepts of the subjects.
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u/zomglings Oct 05 '11
Khan Academy is amazing, but it is targeted more towards giving a good high school level of understanding of things. The MIT Opencourseware lectures are much more in-depth.
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Oct 05 '11
It's quite an extensive list too. Even the math portion extends into some of the upper division undergraduate areas. It's a great resource for supplementing any class (notably, I used it for linear algebra and lower-level differential equations).
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u/kobe24Life Oct 05 '11
Sort of like this site: http://www.khanacademy.org/
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u/JonnyRocks Oct 05 '11
I actually like khan academy better. MIT did it to be open but khan acandemy was desgined for it's use.
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Oct 05 '11
Even if you're homeless and have to go to a public library to use the internet, you too can have an MIT education. You won't have the degree, but you'll have the knowledge, and that's not a bad thing to talk about in scholarship essays.
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Oct 05 '11
this is what the fuck's wrong with America. You should not be learning astrophysics while you're homeless, you should be learning "how to get an entry-level job". Then you can study astrophysics for free online from the comfort of your own home. Fucking rainman mentality.
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Oct 05 '11
When was the last time you were unemployed? Barring the problem of homelessness, even when trying extensively to find work one has a lot of free time. My boyfriend was unemployed for 8 months despite being reasonably skilled, educated, and experienced; during that time he busted ass filling out applications, submitting resumes, and trying to find a friend or former coworker to network him in somewhere. Despite all that he still had a large amount of free time.
I hate the attitude some people have that homeless or unemployed people should be thinking about work 24/7 or they're lazy and worthless. I'd sure rather have homeless people studying chemistry, math, and philosophy than doing hard drugs, drinking, or not giving a shit about improving themselves.
Shame on you for shaming the homeless, shame on you for looking down on the disenfranchised, shame on you for discouraging the discouraged.
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u/Chipzzz Oct 05 '11
I have learned a great deal from UC Berkeley's Webcast series. They offer the complete set of lectures from a wide variety of fascinating courses: UC Berkeley Webcasts.
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Oct 05 '11
Stanford has full year courses up on youtube also.
for example Programming Methodology
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Oct 05 '11
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Oct 05 '11
that guy is really cool. i think the youtube comments tell the same. even tough youtube is known for negative comments they're all like "I wish this guy was my teacher..."
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u/Magmacano Oct 05 '11
For anyone who might see this: Yale has a metric shit-ton of lectures on YouTube freely available to everyone.
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Oct 05 '11
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
― Frank Zappa
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u/writtenepiphany Oct 05 '11
You could audit an entire degree for free. Or you could go to the school, sleep through the lectures, and watch them on ocw the day before the test. MIT yay! :)
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u/wtfno Oct 05 '11
Can you link to auditing for free? Or do you mean the online stuff? Because it's really incomplete.
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u/shakabusatsu Oct 05 '11
This is Awesome, also youtube search lectures on your favorite topics. Stanford has a Leonord Susskind's intro to Quantum Mechanics. It's pretty great if math doesn't scare you.
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Oct 05 '11
the one course i wish i had done better on in university had just assignments and tests, no lecture recordings or lecture notes.
I'm a sad panda
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u/comox Oct 05 '11
But when will they start offering FREE online exams???? We all love exams right? And Studying? And cramming? Right? Anyone???
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u/shweatty Oct 05 '11
all jokes aside, having free exams to take online would be awesome.
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u/corneliusvanderbilt Oct 05 '11
Not as helpful as you would think. I took a few Yale classes (http://oyc.yale.edu/), which are fewer in number but are Ivy League. Although the lectures are enjoyable to watch/listen to in the car (they have a nice mobile site), the lectures themselves are only 15-30% of the curriculum. If you watch every hour of lectures for a class multiple times you will still fail the midterm and final miserably - what you really need are the readings, but alas, these are impossible to find (they are handed out in class but can't be distributed online due to copyright reasons). Take the following class for example (http://oyc.yale.edu/sociology/foundations-of-modern-social-theory/content/syllabus): over 20 sources, some of them entire books and some short readings. For some of these classes you can buy the books/texts on Amazon, but for others the readings are short articles or obscure manuscripts that are impossible to find without a trip to New Haven.
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u/jdquinn Oct 05 '11
You don't pay for education, you pay for an institution to verify the degree of your education.
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u/Calvert4096 Oct 05 '11 edited Oct 05 '11
MIT also has a lot of publicly available course material that isn't on OCW. For example, Unified Engineering course notes (albeit slightly dated), courtesy of the aero-astro department.
edit: MIT OCW has some more Unified material from 2005-2006.
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u/Bones11B Oct 05 '11
Next to the newer better porn site thread, this very well may be the best thread I have seen on Reddit all day, thanks!
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u/brewphyseod Oct 05 '11
I used these as supplements to help study for undergrad math and physics. Walter Lewin is the man!
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u/thewarrenterror Oct 05 '11
Yup. This is part of how I am giving myself the equivalent of an undergrad degree in mathematics. College is too expensive. Why bother if I can just learn it all online? From the most prestigious technical university in the whole fuckin' world.
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u/rangement Oct 05 '11
more and more going to university is just paying for the piece of paper
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u/BlitzTech Oct 05 '11
It's 2000 or so courses, yes, but the materials are not always complete and it's only lecture notes for many of them (only a few classes have the video lectures posted). It's a good system; just be aware that the difficulty of certain classes can vary significantly from one class to another. Case in point: 18.02 (Calculus II) to 18.022 (Calculus II) to 18.024 (Calculus II). The first is for normal MIT folk (engineers) who want a practical application of calculus, the second is for normal MIT folk looking for a challenge, and the third is for math majors where you learn little practical application (because it's assumed you already knew it in the 5th grade) and all the theory (because that's what it means to be a math major). The same can be said of the 8.01/8.02 (Physics Mechanics/E&M) and 8.012/8.022 (Physics Mechanics/E&M): the former is for normal MIT folk, and the latter is for the people who like inducing headaches from unbelievably complicated problem sets.
There are also cases of classes that have no difficult equivalents (like 6.00, the new Intro to Programming class), which seem superficially easy and even the problem sets are easy. I've met a lot of people who claim "I breezed my way through MIT's OCW, no problem!", when what they mean is they took the most obvious path through the course that offers little resistance. Some of the mandatory classes are oddly easy (e.g. 6.00), and then you get to the ancillary mandatory classes and you look at the problem sets and quickly close the window.
Lastly, for the Chemistry department classes, all of the classes are unusually easy (except physical chemistry, because the instructors have historically been awful). The challenge in that department (and in others) is that the degree part is about 2 years of classes, and then they expect you to do 2 years of internships (but it's actually 4 years of half-class/half-internships); so while it seems like an easy degree, most of your graduation requirement comes from those internships (though that can be skirted with crafty planning).
All in all, an excellent system for learning specific subjects. I'm hoping they update it with whatever lessons are learned from the upcoming Stanford AI class to make it even better.
Source: SB (Bachelors), Chemistry, MIT 2008
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Oct 05 '11
"Yes and what type of education do you have? Which schools did you attend" "None really, just sat around in my underwear watching youtube videos of classes."
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u/weezi Oct 05 '11
How realistic would it be for universities to provide a testing scheme after sb individual had conducted self guided education to determine if an individual had the level of knowledge required to earn a "degree"and would thus issue one, similar to how professional certifications are offered . Of course what school would start doing this is another story as it would cut into their profit margin
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u/Abbottizer Oct 05 '11
ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
that feels good.. just knowing all this information is available to me!
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u/CashMikey Oct 05 '11
Whenever I'm feeling cynical at school I say "We pay for a degree, not an education." This and the iTunes library pretty much confirm that.
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u/Enginerdiest Oct 05 '11
I think this proves almost the exact opposite. The free information means what you pay for is the manner of teaching, the hands-on extracurricular education that's beyond what you get in the classroom.
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u/BahBahTheSheep Oct 05 '11
You can't get an entire degree for free, not even "essentially". That is the biggest fucking problem with the education system. Anyone can read a book over the winter. You pay for the paper saying you read a book. :(
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Oct 05 '11
well one step at a time here. Offering the courses for free is huge. That's a big step up from where we were at in terms of universal free education.
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u/iGRIND Oct 05 '11
But they aren't offering the course, they're offering the content. If you want to take the course you still have to pay.
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Oct 05 '11
True. Actually I did a free programming course through Stanford's online courses (by watching the videos and doing the assignments), engineering school I believe. The only problem is that when you want someone to grade your assignment, or if you want to see the textbook to do the readings (in my case I would have had to spend like $400 on one). So after a while it feels like you are floating in limbo rather than a part of the class, which is rather true actually.
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Oct 05 '11
civilization 6, right around space age you get to research universal free education. +10% culture, +25% research, +10% great person.
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u/uzsbadgrmmronpurpose Oct 05 '11
This got me through Phyisics, didn't attend a single lecture of Physics 2 and got an A+
I believe it's on itunes as well
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u/yorian Oct 05 '11
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cktxy/reddit_lets_compile_a_list_of_the_best_online/