College Being

One of the enduring beauties of the internet is the anarchist philosophy that shaped it in the early days. For many years and to a lesser degree still today, you can find things free on the internet that would cost you money in a more traditional marketplace. This open access concept has been picked up by a number of universities and other storehouses of knowledge, resulting in many websites that provide some remarkably extensive resources. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology puts the course material for every course taught at the university online. Other schools have followed suit to varying degrees.

The course material from MIT or any other top tier university is not necessarily going to be easily learned once you open a file. For many of these courses you need certain academic background or the material won’t make much sense. You don’t get to ask questions of a lecture delivered in a MP3 file. You won’t receive credit for going through this course material, but you don’t have to enroll either. For students who are stalled in their own course material and who need another perspective, the websites listed below might be a welcome – and free – resource. To find these sites, go to the home page for each university and search for “open courseware.”

1. The Open Courseware Consortium is an organization that has catalogued open courseware courses from sources around the globe. They also have a comprehensive list of open courseware websites offered by universities on every continent.

2. Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health provides content from the school’s most popular courses. There are twenty topic areas, each of which has material for multiple classes. There are courses on fairly focused topics, but there are also introductory courses in such fields as demographics, epidemiology, and biostatistics.

3. University of Notre Dame offers courses from a wide variety of departments and academic disciplines. There are selected courses in history, political science, sociology, physics, mathematics, civil engineering, and several others.

4. UC Berkeley has integrated 170 courses taken from many different departments into a webcast format. Most have some video or graphics support for the lectures; the format of choice is Apples ubiquitous iPod software. You can watch any of the lectures if you have the software on your computer by downloading from Berkeley’s iTunesU.

5. MIT was the impetus for many of the open courseware projects instituted by other universities. Material from 2,000 courses is available on their website. The courses include the physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering programs that the school is known for as well as courses from the humanities, health sciences, and many other areas. Depending on the course you may find lecture notes, multimedia content, online textbooks, exams and solutions, or some combination of these elements.

6. Carnegie Mellon has designed their open courseware project around a limited number of departments including biology, chemistry, French, statistics, and physics. There is also a course in media programming.

7. University of Michigan has launched its open courseware project with selected classes from eleven academic areas including architecture and urban planning; literature, science and the arts; education; engineering; public policy; social work; and five others. There are not a large number of courses posted yet but more are added on a frequent basis.

8. Stanford has created Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) which offers extensive material for a limited number of classes from the engineering department. Materials include complete video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. The available material includes an Introduction to Computer Science.

9. UC Irvine has developed an open courseware program that offers lectures and materials from a variety of courses. Participating departments include Social Science, Engineering, Humanities, Health Sciences, Biological Sciences, and Arts. Some of the lectures are available in video.

10. Yale has a program called Open Yale Courses with an array of courses from twenty academic departments. Some departments have just a single course in audio/video format, while others offer several. Choices range from music to engineering to Spanish and Portuguese.

About the author: Bob Hartzell has been writing about education for five years on a variety of websites. Most of his recent blog submissions have been about online graduate programs and their value in career enhancement, in recognition of the fact that the job market has gone completely haywire in the last decade. For those short on time or with limited standardized testing consider a NO GMAT Mba program.

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Online learning without a doubt has come across as one of the most feasible alternative to traditional schooling. Now, the question that pings in everybody’s mind include is online learning an effective way of getting educated? With the focus of learning shifting from traditional schooling to distance learning, the questions certainly hold significance. Let me assure that this particular form of learning carries an equal weight to the traditional learning mode provided you meet certain conditions.

• Prior to, discussing the advantages of distance learning, which witnessed a focus shift by going online, let me focus on the certain preconditions that offer it an acceptance in the present age –
• The accreditation of the institute is very important, as it makes certifies your degree with recognition.

The accreditation of the course is also important alongside the institute.

A degree obtained online from a non-accredited institute holds no value and does not help in increasing your marketability. Therefore, if you would like to walk the road of effective education via online, make sure that your institute is globally accepted and recognized in the corporate world.

Coming back to the benefits, the turn of events in recent times focusing upon distance learning has led to such worldwide acceptance of the learning mode. Learning via distance that until sometime back relied upon postal services suddenly went online riding high on the successful inventions of information and communication technology. The online venture of education conveniently replaced the traditional classroom setting in the online virtual world. Classes are now held over the internet coupled with various tech tools that simplifies information exchange and communication.

Now, while answering the question what made this learning effective, my mind only tends to focus upon the blend of accessibility, convenience, and flexibility. It is considered to have created magic in favor of distance learning, which now has conveniently moved onto becoming net-based learning. Here is a look at some of the advantages that works in making it a viable alternative to traditional learning –

• It delivers self-paced learning with the module designed in one’s own convenience
• Balancing work or other family related commitments is easier in this learning mode
• It enhances better learning experience ensuring rich communication and interactivity in class
• The learning schedule is flexible that ensures an attendance to the class anytime anywhere

Distance learning in the present age of net-based learning is known to enhance productivity and motivation among students, as it blends visualization in the learning experience. Since, this is the age of professionalism and the demand is on career-oriented individuals, leveraging your skills alongside the existing knowledge always works in favor of the professionals and students on the run. In this line, you can conveniently say that online learning is an effective way of getting educated. Online education for many, if earned from a recognized institute increases the marketability thus building a strong sale bale profile in the corporate world.

For further references onto the subject, you can refer to the Wikipedia page on distance education detailing on the aspects of this flexible learning mode.

AUTHOR BIO – Melissa Spears holds an interest in producing thought-provoking information based content on various educational topics. Here she focuses on distance learning and the effectiveness of online education.

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