OpenCourseWare (OCW) – Free Online Course Programs
OpenCourseWare, or OCW is a free online resource of educational courses and materials that began at MIT in October 2002. Today about 250 universities and colleges worldwide offer these open and free courses. These universities offer a wide range of courses from high school courses to more advanced higher education curriculum.
The courses also include personal guidance and in these tough economic many people have been turning to these courses for free personal-finance online education. UC Irvine was recently spot lighted by the Wall Street Journal for offering a class titled “Fundamentals of Financial Planning”. They also offer courses titled “Spa Operations”, “White-Collar and Corporate Crime” and “California Subject Examination for Teachers”
OpenCourseWare programs are free to anyone with an internet connection. Typically these courses do not count towards a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity and do not include access to university faculty. However, these free courses do provide an educational resource for educators, students, and self-learners wordwide.
MIT, who started the OpenCourseWare program offers 1,800 department coures ranging from Aeronautics to Writing and Humanistic Studies. For the brave, they can take additional studies with MIT’s OCW courses in Nuclear Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Computer Science.
Highlights of other schools include:
The University of Michigan offers free medical courses on cardiovascular/respiratory, musculoskeletal and immunology.
U.C. Berkeley offers free online courses in Anthropology, Biology, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Statistics.
The University of Notre Dame offers free courses in Theology including Catholicism, Judaism and Islam.
The OCW Consortium lists many of the many 250 U.S. and international universities that offer these free online courses.
