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Friday, January 30, 2009

Free College Lectures Online

Academic Earth

Academic Earth is a video depot for individual lectures and entire courses from some of the top universities in the United States. Visitors to Academic Earth will find lectures and courses from Yale, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Many of the lectures and courses can be found at various websites on the Internet. What Academic Earth does is take all of those lectures and courses and put them in one, easy-to-search, place. You can search for lectures and courses by topic, popularity, professor, or by university.

Click this link to visit http://AcademicEarth.org.

The Teaching Company

The concept is great! Scour the world for the best professors and record their lectures. Paying customers get world-class university courses, at less than world-class university prices, while attending the class at their convenience. I know friends who have listened to a dozen classes this way (while driving). A class that sounds interesting to me is Robert Greenberg's celebrated forty-eight lessons on "How to Understand and Listen to Great Music." A friend said that it was more than a music appreciation class, it was a view of western civilization through music. Professionally recorded, lively, insightful, fast-paced, authoritative, and memorable. What more could you want from college on a cassette?

Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted 175 courses for lifelong learners. They provide the adventure of learning, without the homework or exams.

Another class that sounds interesting is an overview of Egyptian history taught by a mummy expert and a decent introduction to western philosophy. The Teaching Company catalog lists an eclectic range of other seminars. One caveat: these courses seem expensive for many individuals. But they are a lot cheaper than college, and most courses are at least forty or so tapes, so you really get your money's worth. Classes are also available on digital cassette, DVD, and in other formats. You can also check your local library, which would work best for me. Course clubs are another way to get the classes, and this would bring the cost down because you would share the cost with others.

Use this link to learn more about The Teaching Company by visiting their home page.

More Free Science and Video Lectures Online

This searchable blog-based archive offers lectures and slides for introductory science and math courses, and a wide variety of more specialized topics.

Click this link to visit the Free Science Online website at http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com.

VideoLectures - exchange ideas and share knowledge

This site contains free video lectures from the world's leading and prominent scientists." So far, the site features "92 events, 1266 authors, 1454 lectures, and 2247 videos." It also includes a sizable number of interviews and tutorials.

Click this link to visit http://videolectures.net.

Free Video Lectures

A large collection of links to video and audio lectures on science, technology , law, and other topics from colleges and other educational institutions in several countries, but mostly the United States.

Click this link to visit http://freevideolectures.com.

McGill University Offers Free Courses Online

McGill University offers the content of many of their courses for free online. McGill calls their online course content site "COOL".

COOL offers course materials dating back to the fall 2005 semester through the fall 2009 semester. The bulk of the course offerings are in the sciences. The COOL course materials include video and audio lecture files as well as slides and other reading materials. COOL offers the video files in a variety of formats including MP3, WMV and MP4. You can also subscribe to courses via iTunes.

The free access to college course materials made possible by universities like McGill and many others, provide high school students with an opportunity to get a taste of what a college course is like while still in high school. Sampling college courses for free could help students get an idea of what they may want to study in college. The free course offerings can also provide high school teachers with supplemental materials for their classroom instruction.

Click this link to visit this COOL website at http://cool.mcgill.ca/Default.aspx.

OpenLearn - The Open University

The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.

Click this link to visit the OpenLearn website at http://openlearn.open.ac.uk.

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