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400 free courses and resourses from universities


Aquaman

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http://www.guardian....ersity-naughton

Welcome to the desktop degree…

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the title "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University". In it, Professor Noam argued that the basic model of a university – which had been stable for hundreds of years – would be threatened by networked communications technologies.

Under the classical model, universities were institutions that created, stored and disseminated knowledge. If students or scholars wished to access that knowledge, they had to come to the university. But, Noam argued, the internet would threaten that model by raising the question memorably posed by Howard Rheingold in the 1980s: "Where is the Library of Congress when it's on my desktop?" If all the world's stored knowledge can be accessed from any networked device, and if the teaching materials and lectures of the best scholars are likewise available online, why should students pay fees and incur debts to live in cramped accommodation for three years? What would be the USP of the traditional university when its monopolies on storage and dissemination eroded?

If that was a good question in 1995, it's an even better one today. The answers offered by traditional universities over the years varied according to status and mission. Some universities went into denial and pretended that Noam's "dim future" wouldn't happen to them. Some decided that their USPs – their elite brands – would protect them from the gathering storm. Others decided that they would become primarily research-driven outfits with undergraduate teaching being regarded as a tiresome chore that could be outsourced to graduate instructors. A few experimented with distance teaching and the delusion that putting their educational "content" online would solve the problem. But, different though these responses were, all universities were agreed on one thing: in the end, students would have to come to them because only universities could give them the appropriate credentials. QED.

In behaving thus, universities put themselves in the role of the mythical frog in a saucepan of water that is being slowly heated on a hob. As time passes, the frog notices gradual changes in the temperature, but each increment seems relatively tolerable, so the creature adapts to it. But then there comes a moment when the water boils...

Some things have happened recently that make one think that perhaps the water might be reaching boiling point for traditional universities. The key development is a set of three courses created by Stanford University academics and colleagues in three subject areas: machine learning, database design and artificial intelligence. What makes these significant is that they are: intellectually demanding; free; presented entirely online; taught by world-class academics; and inclusive of assessment as well as tuition.

Take the "Introduction to AI" course, for example. It's based on a course taught to conventional Stanford undergraduates and introduces students to the basics of artificial intelligence – which includes machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, robotics, and natural language processing. It's taught by Sebastian Thrun, who in addition to being a professor at Stanford and an expert in robotics is also a vice president at Google, and Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. And it's very serious academically – an undergraduate- or early graduate-level course that requires around 10 hours a week, has weekly assignments and mid‑term and final exams. In order to receive a "statement of accomplishment", students have to take both exams.

The statistics for the venture are intriguing: 160,000 students signed up, from more than 190 countries, with a median age of around 30. But the really staggering thing is that about 23,000 of them stayed the course and finished it. A friend of mine, Seb Schmoller, took it and reports that it was worthwhile but pretty tough going. The project has been so successful that Professor Thrun has set up a spin-off company which plans to enrol 500,000 students on its first two courses: "Building a search engine" and "Programming a robotic car".

Now you could argue that Thrun (and Stanford) are just treading a path that was already laid down by MIT and our own Open University – free content and sophisticated online pedagogy – and that's true. But up to now, universities have held back from offering qualifications for their free online offerings. That too is about to change: starting this spring, students taking MIT's free online courses will, for a small fee, give them academic credentials if they pass the assessment.

The game's on, folks. Who says that a watched pot never boils?

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To elaborate on my point which holds no weight,

What I am trying to say is this looks like a Government insentive to filtrate the market for the loss of Univeristy goers by the increase in fees.

By offering "University Quality" online courses we're going to have everyone going around demanding degree class wages.

Also I think this offers false hope and pretence to anyone that completes a class.

It's probably a psychological factor to raise the esteem of the social environment, getting more people to believe in themselves

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