University Education - FREE online Courses

Often enough, many of us with Academic Accreditation find ourselves attempting to explain basic, simple, practical, entry level concepts to members ignorant of such, and wind up bruising someone's delicate feelings over their lack of education.

Some, regardless of Accreditation or lack of it also find themselves more desirous of concepts, ideas, learning, and training in areas of interest, but may not have the time or money to attend University initially, or for further education regarding whichever subjects one may have interest in.

If you've a thirst for knowledge, there's no need to stumble around in the dark.
There's a substantial wealth of University Courses offered online, for FREE, from several institutions like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and many others.

540 Free Online Courses from top universities are on offer in the link provided.

Course topics with nested specifics and concentrations are listed as:

Archaeology
Architecture Art & Art History
Classics & Classical World
Demography
Design Economics
Film
Geography
History
Journalism
Languages
Law
Linguistics
Music
Philosophy
Political Science, International Relations and Law
Religion
Sociology
Urban Studies
Aeronautics
Anthropology
Astronomy
Biology/Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence
Engineering (Mechanical, Civil and Electrical)
Environment & Natural Resources
Mathematics
Physics
Psychology & Cognitive Sciences
Public Health
Business

The following link provides a List of courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT, and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkelyX), and Udacity

Roughly 300 FREE online courses covering main topics and subtopics listed similar to above are on offer.

If you've really a thirst for knowledge and desire to whet your appetite for learning at no cost to you other than the amount of personal time you want to invest in your own education, then, there you go.

If you're the sort that thinks a University Education is all lies, or that you couldn't benefit through learning, then, well, good luck with all that.
As the saying goes; You can lead a horse to water ... but you can't make it drink. More appropriately; You can lead the ignorant to knowledge ... but you can't make them think.

Granted, these courses won't get you accreditation; a degree, but, you'll walk away with more knowledge on your shoulders than you had before.

No thanks, I would rather educate myself than parrot back text books. The most intelligent and creative people I know are all self educated with very few qualifications or gold stars for being a good little cog.

Originally posted by CallYourBluff
No thanks, I would rather educate myself than parrot back text books. The most intelligent and creative people I know are all self educated with very few qualifications or gold stars for being a good little cog.

as I said before:

You can lead the ignorant to knowledge ... but you can't make them think.

If you think University is about conforming, becoming a 'cog' or 'parroting' text books, you've a lot to learn.

Please attempt to consider that most anti-authoritarian movements, protest actions, demonstrations, and even revolutions grow from a catalytic source of self actualized, University educated students.

Of course, if you don't have any education in History, you might not know this.
You may benefit from clicking the following: Student Activism

You are, of course, more than free to cling to willful ignorance for whatever reason(s) you want to fool yourself into thinking are better than actually learning something.

The links and educational material is all FREE.
What's to complain about?

Nope, I learn bits and pieces of the subjects I am interested in. You are assuming that I argue ignorant points on subjects I know little about. I hold my hands up when I don't know the answers and never force an ignorant opinion on anyone. Some people don't need directing in life and some (like yourself) do. To make a thread on trying to educate the so called ignorant members of ATS shows you have a hugely delusional and pretentious sense of your own intellect.

reply to post by CallYourBluff


Best of luck to you with all that. I'm sure you'll go far.

As far as learning on your own goes; what do you think the information provided is?
It's there for you, or anyone to learn what they want, on their own, online for free.

You've already demonstrated the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance in your statements about 'cogs' and 'parroting textbooks'. You've further stooped to calling names. Feel free to continue this demonstration.

You're more than welcome to ridicule open source online educational resources all you wish.
You might even get some ATS stars for it too. Yay.
I wonder what that says?

Whatever, genius. Carry on correcting people and putting them right. Good luck with that. I hope you continue to keep getting pats on the back and gold stars. You must be the star of the pub quiz.

S+F for you

Thanks!!!! Knowledge is power!

Originally posted by AnonLover
S+F for you

Thanks!!!! Knowledge is power!

Thank you. It's nice to have at least a little appreciation for this as opposed to all the hate mail.

reply to post by Druscilla


That guys a bum;

You inspired me... so I just posted the link on facebook, so I could be like you!

Originally posted by Druscilla
Often enough, many of us with Academic Accreditation find ourselves attempting to explain basic, simple, practical, entry level concepts to members ignorant of such, and wind up bruising someone's delicate feelings over their lack of education.

Appreciate the link .....although the above wording may put a few off. Often in life people speak as though they are above the "ignorant" and uninformed, because they are educated and others are not.

Doesn't bode well as the word "ignorant" is usually used in an insulting way.

The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult to describe individuals who deliberately ignore or disregard important information or facts.

Hopefully people will see past that though, and appreciate the links. Just thought i'd mention it in case the responses are not quite what you expected. Not everyone realizes that it could be a problem.

CX.

reply to post by Druscilla


Very cool. Thanks for the links!

Here's a link to Yale's Open Courses: oyc.yale.edu...

And this one is for their Video Courses. www.youtube.com...

reply to post by CX


Thank you, and I agree that too many attach insult to the word 'ignorant'.
I feel that I was using it properly as a descriptor/adjective, but, none the less, there are those that will take offense, even where there was no offense intended.

Messengers over messages for some I suppose.

reply to post by windword


Thank you as well.
Open source education is a wonderful resource, even for those of us already with accreditation. Reinforcement, refresher learning, or even just revisiting favorite course material for a different angle from that previously learned is like watching new extended cut revision releases of favorite movies.
In such way, you get all the familiar core requisites, plus new, fresh spice, and none of the stress associated with earlier initial familiarity when it was done for credit as a necessity.

what courses have you done druscilla?

I echo,

'what courses have you done druscilla?'

Come on, Dru. When did you become so learned?

reply to post by Druscilla

No there's more of us out here just watching. In this case i felt i had to say something. Sadly there are some people who will always think that they either know it all & believe it or realise they can NEVER know it all & are too lazy to even bother trying. I think your wasting your time with this one, but it was worth a try.☮

You got my hopes up, i thought was going to receive credits for it !!

*goes back to paying couple of grands per course*

I've taken a few courses already and they've been great. I'm sure they don't explore the topics as fully as they might in a university environment, but they do a wonderful job accounting for the audience while keeping it challenging and useful. Anything the lectures may lack can be made up for by incorporating the suggested reading materials.

They also facilitate student interaction through forums, meetups, and google+. I can't wait to see where free online education goes from here. It makes me giddy on a schoolgirlish level. Please sign up and participate, we need to do what we can to make the concept so popular that they cannot help but continue to move forward.

reply to post by luciddream


I believe the long term goal is to provide optional accreditation for a fee.

reply to post by Druscilla


Even though me and you normally differ on our ideas and opinions; I must give credit to it's origin. Thank you for posting this, I may just go through the list and grab and handful.

I decided to SnF yours rather than the recent thread, after reading that you originally posted this.

P.S. : The reason I don't trust much of mainstream, is because my government lies through its teeth and manipulated our citizens. Plus, some of the alternative stuff coincides with my own preconceived individual creative thinking. Do with that what you want/will: hate me, understand me, ignore me.