August 31, 2009

Free Online Education

Interested in taking some college-level courses but not concerned about earning college credits? Sure you could sneak into Econ 101 and hope the professor doesn't do a role call. But there's a much easier way. Let me introduce you to the OpenCourseWare Consortium.

According to their site, The OpenCourseWare Consortium:

... is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

The site goes on to say, "An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses." So essentially, it's free online learning supported by major colleges and universities.

As Internet delivery has become a more accepted source of higher education, it's not surprising that attendance has been gradually increasing. The recent recession has caused more people to consider this option as well. According to this piece from the WSJ, some classes have seen as much as a 30% increase.

I've had one experience with online learning and it was quite good. In 2004, I took a basic accounting class from an accredited institution. I felt the content was good, as was the attention I received from the teacher. I'm not sure how the paid class I took compares with OCW, but since it's free, your time is all you have to lose if you're inclined to try it.

Update: To compound the savings of this idea, be sure to try the various discount text book options online. Bookswim has a text book rental program that looks intriguing (though we haven't used it).