Open Courses for Free | Open Learning Initiative At Harvard Extension School, free and open learning is hardly a new concept. In fact, the Extension School was founded with this mission in mind: to create an affordable way for any motivated student to take courses at Harvard. We stay true to this mission today, offering several free courses and nearly 800 for-credit courses at reasonable tuition rates. Explore our series of free or low-cost courses below. Video accessibility. Abstract Algebra In these free videotaped lectures, Professor Gross presents an array of algebraic concepts. The Ancient Greek Hero A long-time offering at Harvard College and Harvard Extension School, Gregory Nagy's popular exploration of the hero motif in classic literature is offered as a course for credit at Harvard Extension School, as a course on edX, and as a series of free video lectures. American Poetry from the Mayflower through Emerson Discover how the United States developed its own national literature with Elisa New, Powell M. Bits China Terms of Use
To MOOC or Not to MOOC - WorldWise MOOCs have become a media obsession. Why? In part because they are the continuation of a story that has been around since at least the 1990s and the first days of magazines like Wired and Fast Company. At that time, information technology was depicted as part of a revolution: Marxist rhetoric had been appropriated by capitalism. Information technology would change everything through a peculiar mix of a corporate charge and evangelism, expanded profit opportunities and enlightenment. I’d like to think that since then we’ve learned something. After all, universities have produced a substantial body of research that argues that information technology is not an epochal economy-changing technology. These sources must induce at least some suspicion about the wider claims concerning MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Why this obsession with MOOCs? Second, because it taps into a vein of middle-class anger over tuition costs. And there is a historical irony about all this, too. Return to Top
Education startup Coursera partners with 12 new universities, raises $3.7M and hits 1.5M students As we wrote back in April, there’s no doubt that the Internet is revolutionizing education, as more and more companies continue to emerge and alter the way we learn. We’ve kept a close eye on edX, Khan Academy, Academic Earth, P2PU, Skillshare and Codecademy, and rounding out that list is Coursera, one of the youngest of the bunch, which recently raised $16 million to launch with 37 undergraduate and graduate-level courses. Now, since starting off with the likes of Princeton and Stanford, Coursera is announcing 12 new university partnerships, $3.7M in equity investments from Caltech, Penn and existing investors, and a total of 1.5M student users from 190 different countries. Update: Coursea has clarified that 1.5M refers to the number of course enrollments, and that there are currently around 680,000 registered students. As far as funding goes, this additional $3.7M brings Coursera’s total funding to “over $22 million.” ➤ Coursera
What Makes a MOOC Massive? Responding to a LinkedIn Discussion. When people ask me what makes a MOOC 'massive' I respond in terms of the *capacity* of the MOOC rather than any absolute numbers. In particular, my focus is on the development of a network structure, as opposed to a group structure, to manage the course. In a network structure there isn't any central focus, for example, a central discussion. Different people discuss different topics in different places (Twitter, Google Groups, Facebook, whatever) as they wish. Additionally, my understanding is that for the course to be a *course* it has to be more than just a broadcast. So what is essential to a course being a *massive* open online course, therefore, is that it is not based in a particular environment, isn't characterized by its use of a single platform, but rather by the capacity of the technology supporting the course to enable and engage conversations and activities across multiple platforms. Why Dunbar's number?
A Quick Guide To The History Of MOOCs This Is How Students Use School Websites 8.45K Views 0 Likes It's important to have a proper appearance online. Why TED Talks Have Become So Popular 5.67K Views 0 Likes TED talks are useful and free ways to bring high-level thinking and through-provoking ideas into the classroom and your home.
MOOCs: The Myth Of Online Classrooms | INFO 203, Spring 2013 by Sandra Helsley, Ajeeta Dhole, Kate Rushton In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Sellen and Harper write, “For each limit, for each set of actions that paper prevents, there is a set of actions that it enables. In other words, each limitation is also an affordance.” In a previous post, Ignacio, Andrew, and Sydney wrote about the impersonal nature of online education. In this post, we apply the concept of affordance to MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, and consider how online education does and does not afford certain types of learning behavior, just as paper does and does not afford certain types of work processes. MOOCs such as Coursera or Udacity provide open and (typically) free access to high-quality educational resources to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. However, analyses of MOOCs reveal many problems with the online format that may, in part, be attributed to their open-ended affordances. There are a number of ways this has been done successfully.
HigherEdTECH 2013 Making MOOCs Matter: Assessing, Certifying and Credentialing Learning From Hype to Nuanced Promise: American Higher Education and the MOOC 3.0 Era | Cathy Sandeen Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, splashed on the higher education scene in sensational fashion in the summer of 2012. When Coursera (a Silicon Valley start-up MOOC platform) enrolled its one millionth student, The New York Times took notice with a front page article, and the higher education trade press began covering the topic on a daily basis--often with multiple stories a day. Coursera and two other major MOOC platforms, Udacity and edX, were hailed as truly transformational, a potential cure-all for the problems of how to contain college costs and boost the number of Americans who earn college degrees. It's only been a year since MOOC-mania took hold, but already it's been a wild ride, a fast-changing evolution both in how MOOCs are viewed by the general public and the higher education community and in how the courses might best be applied to the needs of colleges and universities and the students they serve.
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: MOOCs Part 5 of my Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012 series The Year of the MOOC Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs. This was, without a doubt, the most important and talked-about trend in education technology this year. And oh man, did we talk about it. In retrospect, it’s not surprising that 2012 was dominated by MOOCs as the trend started to really pick up in late 2011 with the huge enrollment in the three computer science courses that Stanford offered for free online during the Fall semester, along with the announcement of MITx in December. Who cares what Cormier thinks and predicts? January: Googler and Stanford professor (and professor for the university’s massive AI class) Sebastian Thrun announces he’s leaving Stanford to launch Udacity, his own online learning startup. February: MITx opens for enrollment. April: Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller (also involved with Stanford’s fall 2011 MOOCs) officially launch their online learning startup Coursera. May: June: July: August: September: