The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers over 1,800 of their courses, online, for free.

The program, called OpenCourseWare is open to anyone, and includes a large percentage of the courses available to students at the actual college.  People from all over the world are encouraged to “take an MIT course,” though there are obviously two big differences.

#1, they don’t offer course credit.  #2, you don’t get to interact with the instructors, so if you get stuck, you’re stuck.

MIT is not alone in this endeavor.  There are currently over 250 schools around the world that have something similar.  Many of them are part of the OCW Consortium, set up by MIT to help other schools follow their lead.

Nerdular Nerdance (which apparently had a particularly fruitful September issue- See: The last few posts) had an interesting article where one of the authors tried taking a few classes.  His verdict: Buy the books.  And, he’s a writer, not a physicist.

I find this fascinating.  I read about it a few years ago, but moved on to other things.  But, since I now find myself with a little more time on my hands, I’m thinking I may try a course or two.  The biggest hitch, I think, would be having someone grade your work.  If you don’t have a professional judge your coursework, you can’t really gauge your progress.  But, there may be a mechanism for that.  I don’t know.

If I do take the plunge, I’ll report back.  In the meantime, keep trying to learn something new every day.  And by that I obviously mean “read this blog and leave comments.”