Have you ever thought it'd be nice to go to a top ranked educational institution?

• Harvard
• Yale
• Columbia
• Princeton
• MIT
• Stanford
• U. of Chicago
• Oxford
• UCLA
• Berkeley
• Khan Academy

What have those schools in common? Well, for one thing, they're all excellent schools, but more germanely to this thread, they all offer free lectures, literally thousands, via Open Academy, and in some instances, the lectures comprise the whole of a course. (MIT's largesse is particularly commendable.)


So, the thread questions are:

• Have you availed yourself of these institutions' free online offerings?
  • If "yes," and without comparing the course quality, delivery mode, and other to one another or a live classroom experience:
    • What did you like about the lectures/course you took?
    • What did you dislike about them?
    • To what extent did/do you avail yourself of them?
      • Watched a video and/or read lecture notes "here and there" for a specific and/or "instantaneous" learning purpose.
      • Watch a recurring lecture series.
      • Took a course for a grade.
    • Why did you take the lecture(s)/course(s)?
  • If "no," why haven't you availed yourself of them?

Xelor said:

• Harvard
• Yale
• Columbia
• Princeton
• MIT
• Stanford
• U. of Chicago
• Oxford
• UCLA
• Berkeley
• Khan Academy

What have those schools in common? Well, for one thing, they're all excellent schools, but more germanely to this thread, they all offer free lectures, literally thousands, via Open Academy, and in some instances, the lectures comprise the whole of a course. (MIT's largesse is particularly commendable.)


So, the thread questions are:

• Have you availed yourself of these institutions' free online offerings?
  • If "yes," and without comparing the course quality, delivery mode, and other to one another or a live classroom experience:
    • What did you like about the lectures/course you took?
    • What did you dislike about them?
    • To what extent did/do you avail yourself of them?
      • Watched a video and/or read lecture notes "here and there" for a specific and/or "instantaneous" learning purpose.
      • Watch a recurring lecture series.
      • Took a course for a grade.
    • Why did you take the lecture(s)/course(s)?
  • If "no," why haven't you availed yourself of them?

Click to expand...

A huge share of our top leaders have long come from these schools, and look at where America is.

Your claim that these are great schools is in great doubt.

Science is a mess too.

I have been thinking of doing some of the MIT courses for a while now. Thanks for the reminder.

Hawkeye10 said:

A huge share of our top leaders have long come from these schools, and look at where America is.

Your claim that these are great schools is in great doubt.

Science is a mess too.

Click to expand...

Less of our leaders come from the ivy leagues now than in the past. So if you think that we used to be better and education has anything to do with it then yes those schools are great

I've watched several Milton Friedman lectures...not sure what college it was.

Have you ever thought it'd be nice to go to a top ranked educational institution?

Click to expand...

Not really.....I managed to complete my degree without incurring a student debt that could support a small country.

Moot said:

I've watched several Milton Friedman lectures...not sure what college it was.

Click to expand...

Where are they?

I'm aware of the Hoover Institute's "Collected Works of Milton Friedman," but I'm not aware of any of his lectures being part of Open Academy's lecture videos and I can't find them on there.

....more germanely to this thread, they all offer free lectures, literally thousands, via Open Academy, and in some instances, the lectures comprise the whole of a course.​

Click to expand...

The concept is so far beyond our family class and my intelligence it never entered my mind

i'm pretty happy with the educational opportunities that i had. i thank my mom and dad for that. i didn't go to ivy league schools, but the college and grad school i attended were pretty good.

Xelor said:

• Harvard
• Yale
• Columbia
• Princeton
• MIT
• Stanford
• U. of Chicago
• Oxford
• UCLA
• Berkeley
• Khan Academy

What have those schools in common? Well, for one thing, they're all excellent schools, but more germanely to this thread, they all offer free lectures, literally thousands, via Open Academy, and in some instances, the lectures comprise the whole of a course. (MIT's largesse is particularly commendable.)


So, the thread questions are:

• Have you availed yourself of these institutions' free online offerings?
  • If "yes," and without comparing the course quality, delivery mode, and other to one another or a live classroom experience:
    • What did you like about the lectures/course you took?
    • What did you dislike about them?
    • To what extent did/do you avail yourself of them?
      • Watched a video and/or read lecture notes "here and there" for a specific and/or "instantaneous" learning purpose.
      • Watch a recurring lecture series.
      • Took a course for a grade.
    • Why did you take the lecture(s)/course(s)?
  • If "no," why haven't you availed yourself of them?

Click to expand...

There is a podcast series of Brad DeLong at Stanford teaching Econ113, American Economic History that is just fantastic.

The course was given in the Fall of 2008, and he interrupts the course with a running commentary of the 08 financial crisis....in real time- where it was still quite confusing, and the entire system could potentially collapse from week to week.

It’s on iTunesU.

American Economic History, Fall 2008: Economics 113 Syllabus: Fall 2008

Threegoofs said:

There is a podcast series of Brad DeLong at Stanford teaching Econ113, American Economic History that is just fantastic.

The course was given in the Fall of 2008, and he interrupts the course with a running commentary of the 08 financial crisis....in real time- where it was still quite confusing, and the entire system could potentially collapse from week to week.

It’s on iTunesU.

American Economic History, Fall 2008: Economics 113 Syllabus: Fall 2008

Click to expand...

TY for sharing with us a course you've enjoyed.

Red:
Pretty much all economic history courses are fantastic and interesting.

• MIT
• Amherst
• Berkeley (alternate site)

One doesn't have to have taken the two foundational econ courses -- macro and micro -- and US/World history courses (Western Civ. and US History -- those are links to two HS AP offerings; they're the same as a college course of the same description) to take them, but they're far more rewarding if one has.

Indeed, almost any "history of [insert discipline]" classes are really good, regardless of what school offers them. Sometimes, such courses are offered by the relevant topical department rather than by the history department, and other times they're offered, as MIT does, in collaboration with the history department and the topical department. (If one can find one, history of science and technology is another really awesome course.)

• History of Psychology (this one's offered by the psychology dept.) -- This is a great course too because it brings to light the nexus of the human condition and the development of our understanding of endogenous human motivations, behavior and thought processes.

Of course, one can also just take a survey class in a given discipline. Such courses nearly always touch on the history of an idea's evolution.

"How to" courses too tend to be really interesting.

• The Architectural Imagination -- This is a great course for learning to interpret architecture (and to some extent, art)
  
  
• How Things Work: An Introduction to Physics ("Balls and bumper cars")

But who am I to say what's interesting? There's very little that I don't find interesting. What I'm likely to think is interesting is limited only by my bothering to study it.