Is There an Interactive Online GR Course Available?

[glamotte7]

Hello All,

I have an undergrad physics degree. I've been studying GR on my own for a while, including Hartle, Schutz, Carroll, etc. There is NO GR course offered this fall in the state of CO, which is where I live. This fall I'd like to take a real ONLINE class in beginning GR included graded homework, discussions with prof and students and video lectures, etc. With today's technology I don't think this would be too difficult for a university to do or even a group of well educated individuals. I'd gladly pay for the course. Does anyone know of such an offering? MIT has online courses as do perhaps others but they are not interactive.

Any advice is very much appreciated. I've wanted to do this for about a year now and finally have the time.

glamotte7

 

[bcrowell]

Yeah, it would be very cool to find someone online offering real graduate-level physics courses (not just videos available to download). I have a PhD in physics, but I didn't get nearly as much from my graduate coursework as I would have liked. I would love to be able to go back and, for example, really learn field theory, rather than just learning to crank out calculations using Dirac matrices. Unfortunately, I'm just not aware of anyone offering anything like this. I've also heard a lot of horror stories about people taking undergraduate courses online that basically had no interaction with the prof -- or even any evidence that the prof was present and paying attention.

 

[atyy]

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/s383.htm

 

[bcrowell]

Interesting link, atyy, thanks! But it's an undergraduate survey of relativity and cosmology, not a graduate course in GR.

 

[atyy]

Interesting link, atyy, thanks! But it's an undergraduate survey of relativity and cosmology, not a graduate course in GR.

Yes, I just couldn't resist - did you know that this lady - or is it more proper to say Dame - also worked at the Open University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell ?

 

[xepma]

Try:
http://pirsa.org/index.php?p=speaker&name=Robert_Myers

Or even:
http://pirsa.org/C09021/
for the full course.

 

[glamotte7]

Thanks atyy---I took a look. Unfortunately the class doesn't start until Feb 2011 so I won't be able to do it this fall.

Thanks xepma---I took a look at PIRSA. The lectures by Myers on GR are at just the level I'm at. You said that's it's possible to "take the whole course". Does that include interaction with the staff there or simply watching all the lectures? Again I'm looking for something interactive. If I can't find interactive, I suspect these may be the best lectures out there as they look quite good.

To All---Any other info on an online GR course you have would be helpful, particularly about an interactive environment as I mentioned above. Does Physics Forums support any
study group type of structure for further education?

glamotte7