Free University courses
 

I knew about this for quite some time but I never really got into it.
I while ago some well-known Universities started to open their online courses / resources to non-students. I do think it is a great idea for people who are interested in learning and studying without having the financial resources or are interested in a special topic

Anyway, this page offers many different courses:

https://www.coursera.org/

What do you guys think about the idea?

Interesting, and what's the deal with the certificates? Do they add something to your curriculum, are they legit of the universities?

To be honest, there's nothing to stop you wandering into lectures at most university buildings here in the UK anyway. You can learn an entire course across multiple years but just not partake in formal exams or gain a formal qualification. The knowledge will be gained but obviously that won't get you a job without the certificate. If you have an interest in a subject and have a lot of spare time on your hands, it's certainly possible to get away with that sort of learning though. :D

I would be able to go to lectures here too, but it since other people pay for it here, I wouldn't do it.
Well, you can get a certificate but it is not comparable with a complete degree you can get at a Uni. I'd say it is more to meet your intrinsic curiosity and if you plan to study you are able to take introduction classes in that specific area.
In the paper there was one girl from India mentioned who started to take classes at the MIT since she there aren't any Colleges she would afford to attend that have that level of expertise.

You can get certificates and a few are legit for other Universities

Never really thought much of it but within 5 minutes of looking at that website I've signed up for 3 courses :)

I love learning and I total subscribe to the philosophy that your brain is a muscle. If you don't stimulate it and keep it growing, it's going to waste away'


Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence
Social Psychology.

Both of these will be really useful for work and can go down as professional development (which is handy since I have an interview next week :D ) Apart from that I'm hoping it'll give me some ideas for when dealing with DJ clients.


I also signed up for an Introduction to Philosophy though it doesn't have a date yet. I've got a B in Higher philosophy and my teacher used to say I had a natural gift for it. I'd like to refresh what I covered before and maybe develop it a bit more.

You get certificates but from what I can see, none of them actually earn you credits towards a degree so it's good if you're like me and just an inquisitive type of person or you're looking to get into an over subscribed course as it'll give you a leg up.

Sack it, I've signed up for History of Rock Music 1 too.

Can't really list it on the CV but it should be interesting.

Great that you were able to find courses, Jim! Same here. have you seen the rock history course? I am really looking forward to this one. The only negative side will be that to pass the final exam (if you take it) you have to get the books and they are not for free.

From what I know about Social Psychology it helps to understand group dynamics and how we define ourselves individually as a member of a group.
I am always joking about going back to Uni to study philosophy , once I am old :-), so maybe I will do the introduction as well.

The IT /web classes sound great if you want to learn i.e. something about web-design or software usability. I used to have some of them back at Uni but I am thinking of doing one or two to refresh my memory;-).

None of the course I've signed up for have said any of the books are mandatory (one of them even lets you read the relevant chapters for free online) and they can **** off if they think I'm going to be buying any.

The one thing I really don't like about university education is that it's supposed to broaden your mind and give you a holistic education experience but when you get there what you actually get in a lot of courses is: buy this book, read these chapters, do exam on these chapters.

We got seriously stung with it when I did my PGDE. Every single one of the 3 textbooks we "had" to buy was edited or written by one of the senior lecturers and they were all full of total shit.

Check my last post, I've signed up for the rock history course. We can compare notes and plagiarize from each other :)

ok, want to hear something really odd :)

a friend of mine is starting her PHD in South Korea come October and is here for a couple of weeks before she heads back to London, where she lives. i went to pick her up for dinner, she was super late. why? she had just been doing an assignment for one of the courses on this site! she was telling me all about it over dinner, how she's done a bunch of them already, how she thinks these will be super useful for her CV and how things generally work. it's really odd that she was telling me all this just this past weekend and i now find a thread about it here :)

learning is one of biggest pleasures in life for me, i want to know everything and about everything, so obviously i checked the site when i got home. i wanted to enroll is so many courses but i tried keeping it realistic as i probably wouldn't have the time for it all. i've decided to start with something light to have a better grasp on how things work. and i picked.... History of Rock :) shame it only starts in May though, i wanted to start right away!

my friend also recommended this other site

https://www.canvas.net

but Coursera seemed better overall.

yeah, that is often a problem with some teachers or lecturers, they think the world evolves around their subjects and think that their opinion is the only one that counts.

We could form a online study group the rock history class ;).

That sounds odd, indeed :p.
What I fear is that if these "extra efforts" become mandatory in a few years from now, it helps to make the economy more complex than it already is. To get a job you don't just need to have awesome grades, great internships, volunteer work and speak 20 languages you also need to do extra course work like this.

But in my case I can really say I did everything I have in my CV because I wanted to do it for myself and like you said, learning is one of my biggest pleasures in life as well :-) and I need to not subscribe to too many courses. Rock history is a great place to start, though.

To an extent, they're already necessary in a lot of cases. When I was at school we did some sort of course thing where the seniors went along to Glasgow Uni for a few evening sessions in order to earn some sort of credit. This was to help kids from schools in bad areas but the school i currently teach in which whilst not mega affluent, still performs well and recently had an inspection that was rated outstanding has a similar set up where all of the kids wanting to go to uni have to do extra modules to get some sort of accreditation.

It's quite frightening to think how bad things are for the kids just now.

I had a bunch of Advanced Higher pupils stressed out of their heads last year. I pointed out to them that AH's are really difficult, not everyone gets them and if they fail or don't get a fantastic grade, it's not the end of the world.

I then found out in the ensuing conversation that universities have upped their minimum requirements to the point that you really want AH's to give yourself a good chance at getting in. One girl was wanting to do the exact same undergrad that I did in the same university and I found out that with my school qualifications (2 A's and 2 B's at Higher), I'd no long meet the minimum requirements to get in. And I'm teaching this stuff!!!

Study group sounds cool.

If anyone goes for the social psychology course get in touch too as you're supposed to try and organise small study groups.

Wow, that is bad. They should rather examine social skills instead of grades for teachers! and I mean A's and B's is pretty great. At one point (and I think it already is) it comes to a grade inflation. At my uni, people who did the more "artistic" major (we had culture studies) where almost everybody got an A, because it is hard enough to get a job, similar in linguistics.
Here in Germany we have a numerus clausus for many degree programs but not necessarily an entering exam for getting into Uni.

I signed up for Social Psychology but don't know if I'll have the time in a few months from now.