Coursera is, in it's own words, "a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.
Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in."
I just finished my first several lectures on History of the Modern World Since 1760, which Phillip Zelikow is teaching. The format of his class is a simple "conversation", in which he looks at you from a screen and lectures slowly, interspersed with relevant images, graphs, etc. There is an easy quiz at the end of each mini-lecture that is optional. Coincidentally, he taught a few of my classes at Virginia.
So far I'm very interested. The subject is relevant to Western Civilization and US, and it's very interesting to be a student again, especially in such an atypical way. You're actually participating in a version of a flipped classroom. Check it out.
http://www.coursera.org
How long are the lectures Hans? NPR just did a big story on this company on the NewsHour recently - looks interesting, though there is some university faculty push-back that it will be used by schools to cut costs.
ReplyDeleteThe ones I've done have been between five and ten minutes. I'm not sure if that's broken up by the professor or Coursera. It's easy to knock a few here and there.
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