Academic Earth – BTW – this is a link post. The heading is active.
Become brilliant for free. No tuition, but no credits and no degree either. College courses from Yale, MIT, Berkeley, etc.
Another site springs to life attempting to offer the lectures of brilliant minds to the masses (that means you and me). I like the concept and I have tried several courses through iTunes U, but I have found little that keeps me interested. I can usually only find one or two things I want to try and I wonder why the area I follow the most (Education) is not represented. I did listen to the Tom Friedman presentation, but I had also heard it before. Now, if I wanted to learn about economics, computer programming, or physics I might have found the mother lode.
The presentations get graded. I find that kind of creepy. I am used to being evalauted by my students, but I am not certain what I would think of feedback from people who watched for free. I would probably be more interested in the number of times a presentation was viewed.
There are some Intro Psych resources (I think I have watched the course available here before). I was excited when I first encountered Intro Psych lectures from prestigious places and thought I would get some ideas. I gave it a try, but decided the folks I was watching seemed to cover about the same things I cover and had about the same things to say.
What makes the podcasts I follow more interesting than these academic courses? I probably spend 3-4 hours a week listening to podcasts. Perhaps it is the requirement that courses hang together over an extended period of time and accomplish a wide range of goals that makes them less interesting. Perhaps it is just the selection of courses that happen to be available. I wonder if most people have this same reaction.
