Real Learning from the Very Best Online for Free!

Higher education is going open sourced and online. Some of the very best universities in the US, for example the world-renown Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, offer course materials online for free.  You can even take an online version of an on campus course.  You participate in the actual class, from a distance for free.  For example, Stanford University has opened up some courses on technology entrepreneurship, clinical anatomy, computer science and 10 other areas.

While taking these course does not earn college credit,  MIT announced MITx starting in 2012 and plans to offer certifications for mastery in specific areas.   Certifications involve a “modest fee”. This is an exciting development  especially since the program is based on the very latest thinking in using technology to learn effectively online.

MITx is a new move in the school’s 10-year effort to open their courses to the world:

“Offering interactive MIT courses online to learners around the world builds upon MIT’s OpenCourseWare, a free online publication of nearly all of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate course materials. Now in its 10th year, OpenCourseWare includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.

Why mentioned this on the Next Brain Blog?  While taking classes does not sound like a revolutionary new way of building your brain function or improving cognitive performance, the combination of the quality of the course, use of technology in learning and the cost, is revolutionary.

Interested to hear from readers that have taken free full-participation online courses from top US universities.