I love the fact that I can access (as of February) 33 full-length semester courses from my alma mater, Yale University. Absolutely amazing! Do the math. If a student took 4 courses a semester (8 per year), in 4 years of college they’d be able to take 32 courses. So I can essentially get the equivalent content of a Yale general education for free and sit at the feet of the world’s top thinkers in a broad array of subjects (that is a savings of over $200,000!). I’ve been watching several lectures each week. Not only do I learn a lot about fields that are not currently in my area of expertise, but, as a teaching and learning consultant I have lots of ideas about what is going well in the lecture and not. For the Yale courses go here or here.
Stanford also has a number of free courses available, mostly through iTunes. Back in January I watched about 15 hours of lectures on Darwinism and Evolution. These lectures were recorded back in 2008 to celebrate 200th birthday of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his groundbreaking book “On The Origin of Species.” Great learning experience! The creative mind is most likely when one studies, reads, and thinks broadly across a variety of fields.
