Free online courses from top universities | Hacker News Reader

Free online courses from top universities

openculture.com

257 pointsandrevoget34 comments

The breadth of open resources has never been greater than it is today, but unfortunately, it's useless without some semblance of structure. If you have very specific gaps you're trying to fill, it's easier to pick out from the lot, but what I think will be more helpful is aggregators making clear tracks, as many MOOCs have now done (in many cases as paid offerings, although you usually can audit for free). I'd rather my choice be around what I want to be able to do or what broad specialty I'd like to pursue and someone else with the knowledge tells me what specific courses to take--much like we do at university!

> it's useless without some semblance of structure.

If you are starting out (so literally know too little to provide your own structure), then looking up student handbooks is a good place to start. Here is the relevant section of Harvard's: https://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/fields-concentration

You obviously do not get a course for course match, but from there you can pull up the syllabi or go off course titles.

Personally, I think the biggest weakness with MOOCs is the lack of academic recognition. I can take a MOOC course from Harvard, do the work, and get no credit. But if I put down $3,000 and do the same exact course through Harvard Extension school; all that work is pseudo-magically accredited and can be used for things like degrees and satisfying pre-requisites. And to be fair, that $3,000 gets me access to a TA and sometimes the Professor (if they field questions or host their own office hours), but the price tag for "accreditation" leaves a foul taste in the mouth.

I hope future generations judge us harshly for this.

> I hope future generations judge us harshly for this.

I understand it's annoying to jump through hoops to prove your intelligence, but what else are we supposed to do? There are already colleges like Western Governors University that provide fully accredited, self-paced, online college degrees. Are you wanting the top colleges to do this too?

You've got to question the impact on the college's social status that such a change would bring. People don't (generally) go to Harvard for the superior education, they go for the social status that being a Harvard graduate brings. If we make such a school globally accessible, wouldn't that dilute that status?

What about making admission simply based on intelligence plus the interest/initiative to apply, instead of jumping through various hoops?

That wouldn't dilute status because only 1 percent of the population is in the top percentile of intelligence.

> What about making admission simply based on intelligence

How do you measure intelligence for school admissions? Wouldn't that introduce biases?

Also, there's an underlying assumption that college currently is about selecting for and advancing intelligence. What makes you think this is what college is for nowadays?

>How do you measure intelligence for school admissions?

The same way psychologists and the military measure intelligence.

>Wouldn't that introduce biases?

Like what?

>What makes you think this is what college is for nowadays?

Colleges and Universities have historically been and should always be about the preservation and pursuit of knowledge. If that is what is being optimized for, then you should also optimize for intelligence because the two are inextricably linked.

Some may not know about Harvard's Extension School:

http://blog.markshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-...

Master’s degree (ALM in IT): mostly on-line (8 weeks on-campus) for appx. $30K.

I’m an Extension student and have TF’ed for three classes. I think you get a lot of value for the full course instead of the MOOC. Grading, feedback, ability to ask questions, work on a team all significantly enhance the learning process. I haven’t had a single Extension class which did not provide all the access to professor I could ever need. Plus employers look at the credit with more certainty than a MOOC since there is independent proof that you have completed the material. YMMV, clearly.

> I hope future generations judge us harshly for this.

Although I agree that the accreditation is a problem that needs to still be solved, it’s with this last sentence that I don’t agree at all.

Judge us harshly for what? For creating all this free and accessible education, plus the whole infrastructure and technology that makes possible something that never was?

I find this constant anti-human sentiment and lack of gratitude worrying. As if everything should be perfect all the time.

I think you are deliberately missing the point of the last line. Of course free access to a wide variety of education is a good thing - no one is doubting that.

But gatekeeping recognition for that education behind a paywall ensures that we are judging students not solely on their ability, but also on the size of their wallet.

There is nothing "anti-human" about acknowledging that, in an educational era of plenty, our systems are still failing those without the means to pay.

I have nothing against acknowledging problems. That's how we fix them. What I take exception to is the sentiment embodied in that sentence.

The gatekeeping behind a paywall issue is not what I was referring to.

But since you bring it up, I don't think that the analysis is so simple.

For one, I agree that there has been an over-inflation in the cost of universities, at least in the US and the UK (less so in other countries).

This paired with the fact that such education is going down in quality, most of that money pays useless bureaucracy and committees and you cannot default on education debt is a serious issue worth considering.

On the other hand, I also think we have to consider other factors.

For one, people value more things that come with a cost. This has been shown in studies. I recommend on the topic, "Influence", by Cialdini, for example.

In fact, raising fees in the UK seems to have increased attendance (1), although data seems to be contradictory on this one (and that's why I think it's a hard problem)

Anecdotally I can also say that in my business people value more the material they pay for and are more likely to follow through. I know this to be the case for other businesses too.

We have always to pay attention to the fact that the cure might make things worse instead of better. This is often the case with this type of interventions.

For example, countries with higher gender equality actually increase gender differences instead of reducing them (2). No one expected that, but that is the result.

(1) http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-what-happens-to-stu... (2) http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

I recently switched jobs and went through several rounds of interviews with several companies and the MOOCs I listed on my resume always came up. They served as a way for the interviewer to segue into the topic rather than a blind trust like a degree served. Not only did they show self motivation but they also acted as a way to shift the interview towards a subject I'm familiar with.

I think some of that shift is probably because of interviewers second guessing those courses though.

Now.. I don't recommend spamming your MOOC instructor but fielding a relevant/poignant question or even just a note of thanks can elicit a positive response.

I'd go a step further and say most people would benefit from a series of 3-6 courses on life, available freely, online.

Structure on how the modern world works, that'd be great.

Having clear tracks for specific bachelor degrees is a fool's errand, because most people get higher education to make a living afterwards - online courses don't give you a living (outside of web development and a few other very small niches)

Even if online education did allow people to make a living - it's just so incredibly miserable to learn on your own in comparison to a college/university environment! You can take a course or two and it'll be fun - a full curriculum, you have to really be an unusual person to make that happen.

What's interesting is that these courses are _here already_, and anyone who wants to take advantage of them can do so for free.

I'm probably a bit younger than many people on this site, and I learned a massive amount about life and how to live it using CrashCourse videos[1], Khan Academy[2], and a personal finance subreddit[3]. Because of those three sites, even though my household has never made much money, my wife and I are significantly more stable financially and socially than most people in our families.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse/playlists

[2] https://www.khanacademy.org/

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/

Or you might be retired; I keep hearing stories about seniors pursuing degrees - though I don't think I've heard of many going the full nine yards for a doctorate.

You can use software to have social interaction with online courses though.

You can. It's about as good as having an intimate relationship online - you can have it, it's just not even close to the real thing :)

That what we did for on CourseBuffet. Try to mirror the general requirements bachelor's degree and minors. (http://www.coursebuffet.com)

We have not updated in a while but I have been fixing a couple things in the last few days. FB login is down, but you can signup with email. Categorizing courses is time consuming, hence why we are not always up to date.

Great point, and a real gap that needs filling. MIT OpenCourseWare has a curriculum guide, but I don't know how accurately or completely the free online courses map to the actual curricula: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mit-curriculum-guide/

> what broad specialty I'd like to pursue and someone else with the knowledge tells me what specific courses to take

FWIW, Coursera has a "Learning Path" feature [0] that, after you answer some questions and choose a "career", gives you a decent list of classes to take. At least the list I was given was estimated to take ~9 months. It'd be nice if something similar existed that's external to Coursera, too.

[0] https://blog.coursera.org/new-coursera-start-finish-learning...

I was looking at a course and noticed this:

"This course material is only available in the iTunes U app on iPhone or iPad."

That's lame. For years, iTunes U materials used to be available in iTunes store, accessible via macOS and Windows. Now Apple wants me to buy an iPad? Hell no.

[edited for concision/focus.]

Yeah, I've noticed that apple is increasingly locking down their ecosystem as they strive to meet investor expectations. People need to move away from the apple ecosystem.

Ah, I would like to learn everything but I actually end up learning nothing. The blame should go to my own laziness but I prefer blaming the vast number of choices. If only the brain machine interface was available. I'd download it all straight to my brain rather than a computer.

Wonderful link, I have bookmarked it.

Unfortunately, if you try to access it through HTTPS, you get an invalid certificate, and a permanent redirect to the HTTP version. This could be better, nowadays.

  $ curl --insecure --verbose https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
  [...]
  > GET /freeonlinecourses HTTP/1.1
  > 
  < HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
  < Location: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

i was expecting a github pages with custom domain because of that issue, but it seems that the server is an AWS EC2 instance, so yeah... he could've just used lets encrypt.

3.9 MB and 300 requests to 28 different domains when visiting this website. It's a really good page but I wish they would cut down a bit on the advertising and tracking, especially since they try to block anyone with adblock from viewing the page.

Inaccessible sections (math, at least) with adblocker turned on. Which is their right.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=math+courses&t=lm&ia=web

I'd like to also mention this[0] crowd-sourced list of courses[1] on Tech Ethics. Please add your course/class as well:

[0] https://twitter.com/cfiesler/status/931200575873490944

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jWIrA8jHz5fYAW4h9CkU...

Nice, but too many of them are behind some closed service like iTunes. Such stuff should be in public access really and not requiring any registration.

Agree. I think the best platform for these courses is to just create websites that aren't relying on some company's distribution network (ie. itunes).

I highly recommend Sam Altman's course "How to Start a Startup": http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-to-start-a-start-up-a...

I watched it on my lunch breaks, it's a great, thorough introduction.

> The Ethics of Jazz (Lecture Series) - Free Online Video - Herbie Hancock, Harvard

Most of these links are dead.

Examples:

Russian for Beginners 1 - Dalarna University -- playlist is private

Russian Essentials - Cambridge University -- page does not exist

Introduction to Economics - Martha Olney, UC Berkeley -- youtube playlist does not exist

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