Students’ Lives are Mobile and Social
Click to enlarge the infographic
Surveys show students want learning and schools to follow suit.
The challenge:
How can schools harness this social force for learning while attending to some persistent concerns?
Dozens of Places to Educate Yourself Online
All education is self-education. Period. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in a college classroom or a coffee shop. We don’t learn anything we don’t want to learn.
Those people who take the time and initiative to pursue knowledge on their own are the only ones who earn a real education in this world. Take a look at any widely acclaimed scholar, entrepreneur or historical figure you can think of. Formal education or not, you’ll find that he or she is a product of continuous self-education.
If you’re interested in learning something new, this article is for you. Broken down by subject and/or category, here are several top-notch self-education resources we’ve bookmarked online over the past few years.
Science and Health
- MIT OpenCourseWare – MIT OpenCourseWare is a free web-based publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.
- Tufts OpenCourseWare – Tufts OpenCourseWare is part of a new educational movement initiated by MIT that provides free access to course content for everyone online. Tufts’ course offerings demonstrate the University’s strength in the life sciences in addition to its multidisciplinary approach, international perspective and underlying ethic of service to its local, national and international communities.
- HowStuffWorks Science – More scientific lessons and explanations than you could sort through in an entire year.
- Harvard Medical School Open Courseware – The mission of the Harvard Medical School Open Courseware Initiative is to exchange knowledge from the Harvard community of scholars to other academic institutions, prospective students, and the general public.
- Khan Academy – Over 1200 videos lessons covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, and biology.
The Future of Learning: Stanford’s Free Online Education Experiment Is Booming
This fall, Stanford decided to experiment by offering its three most popular computer science classes to the public—for free. Within weeks, 200,000 people from around the globe signed up, with Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, taught by renowned Stanford professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun (pictured above), attracting a whopping 160,000 students.
Norvig’s tracking found that more than 3 million users have come to the page since the university announced the artificial intelligence class. And more than 35,000 of the people who signed up have stuck with Intro to A.I., turning in assignments and taking midterm exams right along with the 175 students paying to take the class in person…
Because of the interest, Stanford plans to offer seven more computer science classes beginning in January, and will expand its offerings to two entrepreneurship courses. Next semester, students will be able to takeTechnology Entrepreneurship—a class on how to launch a successful startup, and The Lean Launchpad, which will teach how to turn “a great idea into a great company.”
The unique aspect of Stanford’s effort compared to MIT’s decade-oldOpen CourseWare and other first-generation online learning projects is that Stanford’s professors aren’t just posting a syllabus and hoping people follow along. Norvig and Thrun have worked to give their virtual lectures the same feel as the in-person Stanford experience. They even take questions from their virtual students and respond to them in live office hours via Google Hangouts.
Of course, the online students don’t get credit for the classes—Stanford verifies a “badge of completion” instead. But that hasn’t cut down on demand, and a growing number of professors are invested in making knowledge available to the masses, regardless of their ability to pay. If the school keeps expanding its offerings, an entire Stanford education could soon be available for free online.
Between this, Khan Academy, and other similar ventures, high quality educational content is finally becoming universally accessible and mobile - DI
By Liz Dwyer Via @Good
