NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, May 2011
Get a Free Education Online
By Ira Wilsker, Radio Show Host,
Columnist, College Professor and deputy sheriff
iwilsker@sbcglobal.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.khanacademy.org
http://education-portal.com/articles/Colleges_and_Universities_that_Offer_Free_Courses_Online.html
http://education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html
http://portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html
http://ocw.mit.edu
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk
http://ocw.tufts.edu
http://ocw.usu.edu
http://www.kutztownsbdc.org/course_listing.asp
http://ocw.usq.edu.au
http://ocw.uci.edu
http://www.khanacademy.org/sat

It is no secret to my regular readers that I have been teaching college for well over the past three decades. Traditionally, both K-12 and higher education consisted of face-to-face classes in a classroom, possibly supplemented by some form of laboratory experience. Several years ago online coursework started to become the rage with almost all traditional colleges and universities now offering some online classes, with several now offering entire online degrees. Personally, I have taught at least one online course each semester for about 10 years, and some of my fellow faculty are teaching entire course loads online. Some major universities are now offering selected courses and lectures online free of tuition, but generally for no credit. Some of the universities offering free courses and lectures online include the University of California at Berkeley, MIT, Tufts, Stanford, Yale, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Irvine, and Vanderbilt.

The number and variety of free courses and lectures offered are staggering and varied. MIT, for example, offers over 2000 free online courses, with a comprehensive online listing at ocw.mit.edu. According to its website, over 100 million people have taken advantage of MIT's free offerings during the last 10 years (source: ocw.mit.edu/about/next-decade). The Open University in the UK claims to be that nation's largest academic institution and its Open Learning website (openlearn.open.ac.uk) gives everyone free access to undergraduate and graduate course materials from the University. Courses offered are representative of any large university and include the arts, humanities, business, computers, engineering, health, language, education, math, psychology, and the sciences. Each of the colleges at Tufts University offers free courses using the Open CourseWare (OCW) concept, with the directories to be found online at ocw.tufts.edu. Tufts open courses are offered by its medical and dental colleges, nutrition college, veterinarian school, arts and sciences college, and its renowned Fletcher School, one of the top graduate schools in international relations. The Utah State University offers free online access to hundreds of its courses on a non-credit basis at ocw.usu.edu. Some of the courses offered by Utah State include Anthropology, Biology, Engineering, Economics, Education, Engineering, English, Family and Consumer Sciences, History, Languages, Philosophy, Math, Physics, Psychology, and a host of other classes.

For those interested in possibly opening and operating a business, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (http://www.kutztownsbdc.org/course_listing.asp) claims to offer the nation's largest selection of free online classes in the field of entrepreneurship, with over 90 such courses available. Kutztown's free courses with an emphasis on small business include the areas of Accounting, Business Operations and Management, Business Planning (including how to write a business plan), Government Marketing, International Marketing, Finance, Legal (business law), Management Development, Marketing, Sales, Taxation, and Starting and Growing a Business. In addition to those courses, another 24 small business courses are available in Spanish.

The University of Southern Queensland in Australia (ocw.usq.edu.au) is a member of the Open CourseWork consortium (OCW), and offers a selection of free, online, non-credit courses from five of its colleges. People interested in learning computer programming may find helpful the USQ course "Object Oriented Programming in C++". Other courses offered include Teaching Students with Special Needs; Technology and Society; Creating Interactive Multimedia; Introduction to Tourism; Studying to Succeed: Planning your career; and General Science.

The University of California - Irvine (ocw.uci.edu) offers several dozen free online courses in the Arts, Business and Management, Education, Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities, Information and Computer Sciences, Law, Physical Sciences, Social Ecology (criminology and public policy), and Social Sciences. I found several of the Business and Management courses especially intriguing, including courses in personal finance, business analysis, and human resources. As an undergraduate, some of my favorite courses were in the physical sciences, and the University of California - Irvine offers free online classes in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and math. Outside of academia, I have special interests and training in criminology, and UCI has some courses under the heading Social Ecology that I found most interesting, including a course in hate crimes, and another in 'White-Collar and Corporate Crime". While not offering the most comprehensive assortment of free online courses, I did find several of the most interesting at UCI.

While not a formal educational institution, one of the largest collections of free courses and academic lectures available is from the Kahn Academy, http://www.khanacademy.org. According to its website, the Kahn Academy has as its motto, "A free world-class education for anyone anywhere." The mission of the Kahn Academy is, " The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge." To meet this mission, Kahn Academy is currently offering over 2100 courses and lectures geared for grades K - 12, as well as college and profession content. These courses are presented by online video, and are predominantly in the areas of math, science, humanities, history, finance, and economics. For those who are planning on taking any one or more of the many standardized academic tests, there is even a section with videos on test preparation. In order to access all of the Kahn Academy features, it is necessary to login with either a (free) Google or Facebook login; if the user does not have a Google or Facebook account, links are provided to register for those services.

The Kahn Academy math videos cover all levels of math from basic arithmetic, to pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, probability, statistics, pre-calculus, calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra. In addition to the lecture videos, there are also hundreds of "Worked Examples", with 180 such examples for Algebra I alone. For those who may need a refresher, there are videos in developmental math. I found the videos with brain teasers a lot of fun to work.

Many students entering college lack some of the basic academic skills, with math weaknesses often being one of the most prevalent shortcomings of new college students. The Kahn Academy has an extensive collection of Developmental Math resources that may better prepare students for the basic academic math courses. Developmental Math 1 is listed as, " Worked developmental math examples from the Monterey Institute. These start pretty basic and would prepare a student for the Algebra I worked examples". Approximately 200 videos are available which explain each of the basic math properties and functions at a level appropriate for the developmental student. The Developmental Math 2 section consists of about 50 videos and lessons which are described as " Worked developmental math examples from the Monterey Institute (part 2). These start at Algebra I and would prepare a student for basic college mathematics." It may be very worthwhile for prospective college students to review these videos prior to taking the in-house placement tests given by many colleges.

The biology section of the Kahn Academy says in its heading that it is for high school and first year college biology students, but the huge selection of biology videos available may also be useful for anatomy, nursing, medical, veterinary, and other health science students. Specialized topics in the biology section that have strong medical and health implications include several educational videos on diabetes (A1C, Glucose and Insulin, Blood Sugar), heart disease, strokes, nephrology (kidney diseases), oncology, blood disorders, and other medical topics.

With the recent disaster and radiological crisis in Japan, the Chemistry, Physics and Cosmology and Astronomy videos available at the Kahn Academy may be of interest. In the Cosmology and Astronomy section are a series of classes on plate tectonics, Pangaea, and seismic waves may explain how earthquakes occur. The Chemistry and Physics sections have several classes on radioactivity.

I teach economics (micro and macro) every semester, and will be integrating the free economics videos available from the Kahn Academy in my courses, both my live and online classes. Economics is covered in several sections, including the "Current Economics' section, where the contemporary issues of unemployment, inflation, and the national debt are explained. Money and Banking has its own section, which explains how banks function, and how money is created. Other economics related categories include the "Credit Crisis", "Currency", "Paulson Bailouts", and "Geithner Plan". For those who may desire to understand what is going on in our economy, this may be an excellent resource.

Many students dread the various college entrance exams, and the Kahn Academy has a substantial library of standardized exam preparation videos. Kahn offers preparation for the SAT - Math exam at http://www.khanacademy.org/sat, where over 100 videos are available which show how to successfully work all of the math problems in the 10 SAT-Math practice tests. Other standardized exams for which Kahn Academy offers free video reviews include the GMAT exam (over 100 videos at http://www.khanacademy.org/gmat), the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam), and the IIT JEE (The Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination), the annual college entrance examination in India.

With the abundance of free online courses and materials available that cover almost every academic pursuit from K-12 through graduate and professional school, there is an opportunity for anyone, regardless of academic level or achievement, to learn whatever personally interests them. Since the courses are all free, there is no financial risk involved with learning something new, but there is a lot to gain. Knowledge is power.

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