Friday, September 4, 2009

Domo Schola Doctrina Gratis

Yo, has your favorite blogger gone way around the bend? Heck, no - I just want to call your attention to a very interesting article in Popular Science's September 2009 issue:


The author, Josh Dean, attempts to craft his own curriculum based on the online offerings of several universities (including one you may have heard of, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and other sources. He "went" to his "college" for a month.

Among other things, Dean describes MIT's OpenCourseWare program, which offers over 1800 courses online, for free, not for credit. Of course, if you want tangible items, such as textbooks, you have to pay for them. He also describes taking Romanian from a company called Before You Know It and how it won't help him on a future trip to Ecuador, how two college graduates tried to cobble together an "alternative grad school" from MIT's OCW, and his adventures in learning computer languages.

Finally, be sure you read Dean's five Free Online School Rules at the end of the article! Note also that the online version of this article includes links to MIT's OCW, and to nine other sources of free online courses that PopSci likes.