Free MIT courses online
 

A friend of mine showed me this the other day. MIT is offering online material at no cost through their MIT open course ware.

I thought it was kind of cool that MIT made the shift to share their material. I can begin to see that with the power of the internet the education paradigm is beginning to change.

If you're interested check it out: About OCW | MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials

They have loads of material. Engineering, Bio, Chem, Physics, etc.

Or google: mit opencourseware

What this proves is how people go to school for just the piece of paper not the knowledge, otherwise MIT would not be able to do this without completely running their business into the ground...

It's a good refresher, or a quick intro, if you've got skills elsewhere.

mit seems to just give the material.
https://www.edx.org/course-list/alls...cts/allcourses
according to my friend although edx has less classes "you have online classes, exams and shit, you also get a certificate if you pass"

i see what youre getting at what you think in terms of liberal arts etc, stuff that has a tough time finding real applications in the real world. but i disagree with the notion that all schools are geared for is getting you a recognizable name on your degree, especially MIT

for such a technologically inclined school like MIT, it is the ecosystem that they provide in addition. much more than just going to class and what not, but you really get to embrace the culture. you get a collection of great minds together and get to really push eachother in that area of study. you get laboratories to actually complete your projects (electronics, robotics, networking hardware). You have experienced profs and others working in the field to guide you and push you along the right trajectory. humans are sponges, and you will soak up your environment. This is the basis of learning

Sure, you could pick up a few things here and there at home with some videos online. But that only goes so far. Humans are very much social creatures. You would not know how to speak your current language if it were not for your constant surroundment with other humans

with initiatives like coursera.org and such, it does not hurt for MIT to post some videos online. it definitely enhances their brand as well

despite all the new free content online, MIT (amongst other well known schools in the US) are still popular destinations post secondary school. They are finding ways to move along with the trend in online learning. Even UBC is offering some courses for free on coursera.org

Education is getting a lot of flak recently due to in part students not choosing a field that has applications that can readily use the skills and knowledge they picked up in the classroom. Yes, many are going down the wrong path taking very theoritical or abstract majors of study. Yes it does help them shape their minds and guide them maybe towards a brighter destination. But it does not provide the shovels and hardhats that will actually earn you the income to be able to live life.

I recall my grade 12 math teacher told us of how some of his past successful pupils were UBC graduates who ended up at BCIT afterwards taking a technical diploma. Not a bad idea if you didnt study a really technical subject at UBC

One of the things I appreciate about growing up in Canada is the fact that they pushed critical thinking in school. One should use this asset they gave us and really assess the education system and to be able to use it to our needs.

Post secondary is a business like any other. They are there to make money. :ilied:
So lets use this product/service to the best of our abilities instead of just blindly enrolling students into it hoping for the best

Udacity has been doing this for awhile now, iirc the courses were being taught by former heads of industry (though techs)

I believe wharton has their 1st year MBA online for free too. =)

Well stated.
I completely agree with you.

A lot of institutions are beginning to pick up on this trend.
Online learning (especially free) is becoming very popular. Khan Academy is a great example.
And the fact that you can get credit for the free material is providing even more incentive. I like the fact that if you already have a background in something, most of this stuff is a great refresher.

But I do believe in having that classroom environment. It's also another great way to learn and develop.

+1 for Khan Academy, some really interesting stuff on their youtube channel.

http://www.revscene.net/forums/66044...ation-all.html

Read about this back in 2011. Seen it mentioned once a year at least, since. Apparently, they're not the only ones who offer their course material online, either.

i dunno, MIT revolves around mostly building + designing stuff so i can see how they can afford to give course material for free

stanford also offers free courses

It's not just MIT, a lot of schools go have their lectures and old exams posted online. If you would search deep enough, any self respecting University in the past 10 years posted their courses online. Some are public, a lot were private since the intended audience was the students taking the courses.

In the recent years, showing this much details of your courses has become more formal to be distributed to the public (ie Open Courseware)

I remember when I started Uni in 2000, I was practicing on old Harvard Calc 1 exams. Back then, their Open Courseware that they advertised was limited to literally a dozen courses only.

Check out Open Yale, I think they have most of their Undergrad stuff online now. I use it for a refresher at work - much easier to transfer academic knowledge to practical day-to-day tasks at work.

There's also edX and Coursera that offer a variety of online courses from major universities.

it's been ongoing for a while now, ubc has it as well.

this is the Harvard one

Harvard Open Courses for Free | Open Learning Initiative

Stanford

Stanford Online

Well said. I was half serious, half just pointing it out for laughs.

I agree though, in my time at BCIT the time spent with other developing and interacting was absolutely imperative for my learning, which is why now that I have online classes in my last year I absolutely despise them. I don't believe I am learning nearly as much from my online classes and I put in far more effort.

And as an unrelated note (and off topic), in my 120 student diploma program at BCIT, we had atleast 4 graduates from other universities; one from UVIC eng, one from UBC arts, one from mcgill arts, and one from SFU (don't know what he did). Among those graduates there were plenty of people who switched after 1 or 2 years and came to BCIT. I believe that is a testament to the quality and applicability of what BCIT teaches.

my friend goes to ubc and he said they offer this as well

the storm of Vancouver Realtors Facebook update - Educated at MIT School of Sauder (derp)

all schools do now

+1 there's a reason why zuckerberg and bill gates dropped out of harvard and why countless ivy league students forged friendships and companies worth billions together. the main point of going to an ivy league school is to meet other smart people, network and start something organically from there

harvard and MIT were offering online courses for cheap for regular people 1-2 years ago, i thought that was pretty cool too