Free education from MIT!!!

billiards

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but MIT have put up a lot of course notes for free access. You just need a pdf reader. Here's the link:

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

It is quite frankly amazing! You can learn anything from maths to linguistics, I still can't quite contain how happy I am to have found this.

hypatia

That is really a wonderful link. Thanks for posting it. I no longer care about credits, learning is just for my own enrichment. I already peeked and saw a few that I may take.

FredGarvin

OCW has been around a few years now. It is a great program but don't delude yourself. There is a lot more to learning the topics than looking at the class notes and homeworks. There are some classes that have video links to them.

billiards

Yeah right, I've spent the whole day going through stuff and realised its not quite as good as I first thought. Good supplementary info though, and a useful source for textbook references.

FredGarvin

You need to take a look at this area of OCW:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/avocw.htm

fourier jr

i'm not amazed. universities all over the world put course notes online. gilbert strang (mit math) has even been putting complete videos of his lectures (at least for his matrix heory course) on his page for years now. i don't see what the fuss is all about. how would downloading a course from mit & studying it be better (or even different) from studying a textbook, the same way people have learned stuff for decades, or longer? i guess it's free so it has that advantage but other than that i don't see a difference. maybe it helps people find out what to study as well; some like more direction than others.

dontdisturbmycircles

I like watching Prof. Walter Lewin's physics lectures. He a really fun and excellent prof to watch(I think he is retired now). Sometimes watching one of his lecture's after studying the same subject for school helps to enrich my understanding of the material.

hypatia

Free makes a giant difference. The last text book I bought cost $180.00. As refresher courses, it seems perfect.

fourier jr

the fact that the course materials are free doesn't mean much to me. i haven't bought a brand-new textbook in a long time; i guess i didn't think of that when i put up my other reply. i always get them used through www.abebooks.com, & i would never pay more than about $30-40 for one. what i was referring to when i said free was the tuition, not the textbooks. now that i think about it though, you're right, free course materials would make a huge difference.