Free online computer courses

[waltky]

It must be good if it's free...

17 more top universities offer free cyber courses
September 19, 2012 — Seventeen leading universities in the U.S. and abroad will start offering free cyber courses through the online education platform Coursera, the company said Wednesday.

The announcement by Mountain View-based Coursera underscores the rapid expansion of so-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, that are reshaping the higher education landscape. Coursera, a for-profit company started by two computer science professors at Stanford University, will now offer more than 200 courses from 33 institutions that are open to anyone with Internet access. Officials said the website has registered 1.3 million students around the world.

The new Coursera partners include Brown, Columbia, Emory, Vanderbilt and Wesleyan universities, as well as Berklee College of Music and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The foreign universities added are Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of British Columbia, University of London, University of Melbourne, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Coursera said.

The new additions include five public institutions: Ohio State University, the University of Florida, University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland and University of California, Irvine. "As boundaries and limitations begin to disappear in the world of higher education, Coursera is clearly an up-and-coming player on the global stage and we look forward to partnering with them," University of Florida President Bernie Machen said in a statement.

EdX, a competing online platform founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced this month that it will start giving students the option of taking proctored final exams, which will allow them to earn independently validated certificates to show potential employers or educational institutions.

In a report issued last week, Moody's Investors Service said the growth of the online courses could help participating universities generate new revenue, increase brand recognition and become more efficient. However, the Moody's authors warned that such courses, which can reach an unlimited number of students worldwide, could hurt for-profit education companies and less selective nonprofit colleges that could see reduced student demand.

17 more top universities offer free cyber courses | CNSNews.com

 

[waltky]

College credit for free online courses...

College credit recommended for free online courses
Feb 7,`13 -- Students may soon be able to receive college credit for the free online courses that are reshaping higher education.

The American Council on Education planned to announce Thursday that it is recommending degree credit for five undergraduate courses offered by Coursera, a Palo Alto-based company that provides "massive open online courses" from leading universities. "A rigorous evaluation of these courses showed that they meet ACE's standards for college credit recommendations," Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, whose recommendations are used by colleges and universities to determine whether to offer credit for nontraditional courses.

Over the past year, dozens of leading universities have begun offering free, digital versions of their most popular courses, allowing tens of thousands of students to take a class at the same time. But so far, few institutions have offered degree credit for them. Allowing students to get credit for massive open online courses, or MOOCs, could help make it easier to earn a college degree, said John Aubrey Douglass, a higher education researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. "As long as we can assess and ensure quality, it's providing one more way that students can receive an education at an affordable cost," Douglass said.

The American Council on Education, which represents U.S. degree-granting institutions, is recommending credit for five entry-level classes: Algebra and Pre-Calculus from the University of California, Irvine; Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Duke University; Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach from Duke University; and Calculus: Single Variable from the University of Pennsylvania. The courses themselves are free, but students seeking credit will need to pay between $100 and $190 to verify their identities and take exams monitored by webcam.

"There are many working adults today that do not have a college degree," Andrew Ng, a Stanford University researcher who co-founded Coursera, told The Associated Press. "I hope the convenience of an online class can be a first step for many of these adults to go back to school to earn their degrees." The announcement comes less than a week after Coursera suspended an online course offered by Georgia Institute of Technology because of technical troubles. The course, which was about how to run an online course, will be offered again at later date, Ng said.

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