The Saylor Foundation. Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university? | Education | The Observer. Two years ago, I sat in the back seat of a Toyota Prius in a rooftop car park in California and gripped the door handle as the car roared away from the kerb, headed straight towards the roof's edge and then at the last second sped around a corner without slowing down.
There was no one in the driver's seat. It was the prototype of Google's self-driving car and it felt a bit like being Buck Rogers and catapulted into another century. Later, I listened to Sebastian Thrun, a German-born professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford University, explain how he'd built it, how it had already clocked up 200,000 miles driving around California, and how one day he believed it would mean that there would be no traffic accidents. A few months later, the New York Times revealed that Thrun was the head of Google's top-secret experimental laboratory Google X, and was developing, among other things, Google Glasses – augmented reality spectacles.
"It's going to change. But they're not alone. The Minerva Project. As Grants Run Out, Universities Pony Up Cash for OpenCourseWare - Wired Campus. It’s been a good month for people who worry about the sustainability of open-education projects. First, a Brigham Young University study found that offering free online access to distance-education course materials doesn’t hurt paid enrollment, giving a boost to those who think the best business model for publishing free content is one that dangles it as bait to draw in students for paid courses. Now many leaders in the world of open education — a movement whose original projects were largely financed by foundation grants — are ponying up their own cash to keep free courses thriving.
On Monday more than a dozen universities and groups pledged a total of $350,000 over five years to support the OpenCourseWare Consortium, an association that promotes the publication of free content like lecture videos, assignments, and syllabi. He isn’t uncorking the champagne quite yet, though. “We will still require grant and sponsor support for a few years beyond the Hewlett grant,” Mr. Return to Top. Learning. 10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online. See our list of universities that offer free online writing courses. Learn about what courses are available and what topics they cover to find the course that's right for you.
Online Writing Courses for Credit Many schools offer free online courses and materials through OpenCourseWare (OCW) projects. While formal admission isn't necessary to access lectures and other materials, these courses don't usually award college credit. Students looking for the same ease of access and the opportunity to apply their study time towards a degree or certificate program might want to consider courses that can lead to an alternative form of credit.
For far less than the cost of enrolling in a traditional class, Education Portal offers hundreds of online courses that allow students to start working their way towards real college credit. The English 104: College Composition course is just one such example. Free Online Non-Credited Writing Courses Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technical Writing. University of Michigan | Open.Michigan. Udacity | Free Online Courses. Advance your College Education & Career. Coursera.org.