Free Online Classes

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

2008-06-14T17:56:00.001+02:00

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes – the two leading figures on connectivism and connective knowledge - will co-facilitate this innovative and timely course.

This course will help participants make sense of the transformative impact of technology in teaching and learning over the last decade. The voices calling for reform do so from many perspectives, with some suggesting 'new learners' require different learning models, others suggesting reform is needed due to globalization and increased competition, and still others suggesting technology is the salvation for the shortfalls evident in the system today. While each of these views tell us about the need for change, they overlook the primary reasons why change is required.

United Nations University OpenCourseWare

2008-05-24T23:18:00.001+02:00

A handful of courses in government and development from the United Nations University.

University of Tokyo OpenCourseWare, part 2

2008-05-24T22:49:00.001+02:00

Offers a couple of courses in each of the areas below.

University of Tokyo OpenCourseWare, part 1

2008-05-24T22:44:00.002+02:00

Offers a couple of courses in each of the areas below.

Tokyo Tech OpenCourseWare

2008-05-24T22:26:00.002+02:00

A collection of technical courses from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Capilano College OpenCourseWare

2008-05-24T20:19:00.001+02:00

University of Southern Queensland OpenCourseWare

2008-05-24T20:11:00.004+02:00

Naropa Poetics Audio Archives

2008-05-17T17:24:00.002+02:00

The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university's Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium

2008-05-14T23:01:00.003+02:00

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

This page lists all the national and international schools in the OpenCourseWare Consortium that was started by MIT, many of which are listed in this blog. Browsing for interesting classes isn't particularly easy on the OCW site, but it does let you perform a google search of the courses offered by all the schools in the consortium. In the meantime, I'll see about listing all those schools and courses here, to make for easier browsing.

Notre Dame OpenCourseWare

2008-05-14T22:38:00.003+02:00

Notre Dame OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners throughout the world.

A handful of courses, many focusing on Islamic studies.

The Sophia project

2008-05-14T22:07:00.005+02:00

Modeled after MIT’s OpenCourseWare Initiative, Sofia encourages the free exchange of community college-level materials on the World Wide Web.

This site provides 8 introductory courses in a variety of subjects.

Utah State OpenCourseWare, part 2

2008-05-14T22:05:00.003+02:00

Utah State OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational material used in our formal campus courses, and seeks to provide people around the world with an opportunity to access high quality learning opportunities.

Utah State OpenCourseWare, part 1

2008-05-14T21:51:00.005+02:00

Tufts OpenCourseWare

2008-05-11T12:09:00.011+02:00

Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement initiated by MIT that provides free access to course content for everyone online.

This is like the MIT OpenCourseWare offerings, but with a focus on the life sciences.

Statistics

2008-05-08T22:54:00.000+02:00

Kind of an online stats textbook.

Video Math Lectures from MSRI

2008-05-08T21:12:00.002+02:00

The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) exists to further mathematical research through broadly based programs in the mathematical sciences and closely related activities. This library of open educational resources features over 400 video lectures on math topics. These university level course are available for free download.

MIT OpenCourseWare, part 4

2008-05-08T20:05:00.000+02:00

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

The mother of all online course offerings. I wasn't able to fit all of the tags listing the subjects offered, so I broke the post into a few parts.

MIT OpenCourseWare, part 3

2008-05-08T20:03:00.004+02:00

MIT OpenCourseWare, part 2

2008-05-08T20:02:00.003+02:00

MIT OpenCourseWare, part 1

2008-05-08T20:01:00.006+02:00

Connexions

2008-05-08T19:57:00.004+02:00

Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.

This is basically a collection of thousands of short courses on a variety of subjects too large to list.

Berkeley Podcasts

2008-05-08T19:48:00.002+02:00

A list of podcasts in various subjects from Berkeley.

OpenLearn from Open University, part 2

2008-05-08T19:46:00.003+02:00

This is basically a huge collection of short courses (ranging from, say, 3-20 hours each) on a variety of subjects, from The Open University.

OpenLearn from Open University, part 1

2008-05-08T19:45:00.009+02:00

This is basically a huge collection of short courses (ranging from, say, 3-20 hours each) on a variety of subjects, from The Open University.

Mechanics

2008-05-08T19:24:00.002+02:00

A video course/supplement about the mechanics of materials.

Monterey Institute

2008-05-07T23:13:00.001+02:00

The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE) is an educational non-profit committed to improving access to education. This library of open educational resources features course materials for seven Advanced Placement courses from MITE. These high school level materials are available for free download.

Looks like it offers a single intro (or above) course in a handful of topic areas.

ArsDigita (MIT) computer science

2008-05-07T23:10:00.002+02:00

ArsDigita University was a one-year, intensive post-baccalaureate program in Computer Science based on the undergraduate course of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The majority of the instructors were professors from MIT and the program was tuition free. After running from September 2000 through July 2001, seeing the first class to graduation, the program was forced to shut down.

This library of open educational resources includes lectures and coursework from the ArsDigita curriculum. These university level materials are available for free download.

This is basically a handful of comp sci courses.

Berkeley video classes

2008-05-07T23:04:00.003+02:00

A list of video-based technical courses offered by Berkeley, courtesy of Jimmy Ruska. His site also provides links to language courses.

The stats and physics courses are mostly introductory.

Photoshop tutorials

2008-05-07T23:02:00.000+02:00

We’ve searched through dozens of video-sites, forums, articles, blogs, portfolios and communities. And we selected 80 excellent Adobe Photoshop video tutorials which you can use as a starting point to improve your skills or observe how professionals do their job. Among other things, below we present Photoshop video tutorials about speed painting, design of buttons and interfaces, beauty retouching, digital matte painting, photo manipulation, effects and much more.

Courtesy of Smashing Magazine.