The Open Education Consortium: Free courses in 30,000+ modules from 280+ institutions in 40+ countries in English & 28 other languages

HISTORY

The OpenCourseWare movement started with the University of Tübingen in Germany in 1999. However, in 2001 MIT OpenCourseWare blossomed in the U.S. This program inspired the birthing of the Open Education Consortium through which 280+ universities and other institutions have made their course materials available as open educational resources.The program was  based on a  large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course materials.

The Open Education Consortium

The Open Education Consortium (OEC), with it's headquarters in Massachusetts, USA, is a globally based network of educational institutions. Where individuals and organizations support an approach to education based on openness, collaboration, innovation and collective development and the use of open educational materials. The Open Education Consortium is a non-profit, social benefit organization registered in the United States and operating worldwide.

Mary Lou Forward is the Executive Director of the Open Education Consortium, providing leadership for the organization’s efforts to advance open education by improving higher education and people’s access to these types of programs.  

Mission & Vision

The Open Education Consortium:

·         Is a worldwide community of 280+ higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing open education and its impact on global education;

·         Envisions a world where everyone, everywhere, has access to the education they need to build their futures;

·         Seeks to instill openness as a feature of education around the world. Allowing expanded access to education while providing a shared body of knowledge upon which innovative and effective approaches to today’s social problems can be built;

·         Serves as a resource for starting and sustaining open education projects, as a coordinating body for the movement on a global scale, and as a forum for exchange of ideas and future planning; and

·         Aims at bringing about change by leveraging its sources of expert opinion, its global network and its position as the principal voice of open education.

Open Education Consortium Honored

The Homeschool Base program is the largest volunteer-driven resource and news website for homeschoolers. This program has named the Open Education Consortium as one of the Top 10 Open Course Education Websites of 2017.  The award is recommended by teachers, home educators, and homeschool parents; and honors exemplary websites/apps that offer quality, innovative, unique, cost-effective, or significant value to teachers, educators, and homeschooling families. 

What is Open Education?

Open education encompasses resources, tools,and practices that employ a framework of open sharing, to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.

The key is to be open ; being open does not just allow access, but allows the ability to modify and use materials, information, and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for large and diverse audiences.

Why is Open Education important?

People want to learn. By providing free and open access to education and knowledge, people can fulfill their desire:

·         Students can get additional information, viewpoints and materials to help them succeed.

·         Workers can learn a new skill that will help them on the job.

·         Faculty can exchange materials and access resources from around the world.

·         Researchers can share data and develop new networks.

·         Teachers can find new ways to help students learn.

·         People can connect with others they wouldn’t otherwise meet to share information and ideas.

·         Materials can be translated, mixed together, broken apart and openly shared again, increasing access and allowing new approaches.

·         Anyone can access educational materials, scholarly articles, and supportive learning communities anytime they want to.

·         Education is available, accessible, modifiable and free.

Open Education Consortium Sponsors

Activities of the Open Education Consortium are generously supported by:

·         The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Sustaining Members of the Open Education Consortium:

The African Virtual University	Open Universiteit
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources	Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
Delft University of Technology	Taiwan Open Course Consortium
Fundação Getulio Vargas – FGV Online	Tecnológico de Monterrey
Japan OpenCourseWare Consortium	Tufts University
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health	Universia
Korea OpenCourseWare Consortium	Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	University of California, Irvine
Netease Open Courses	University of Michigan

And Contributions of Member Organizations

·         280+ organizations in 40+ countries

OPEN EDUCATION CONSORTIUM RESOURCES

The “Resources” page of the Open Education Consortium website (address given below) has four sections: Open Education Information Center; CCCOER Webinars; Courses in STEM; and Open Textbooks:

• OPEN EDUCATION INFORMATION CENTER

This initiative strives to provide information on all aspects of open education in one place. Information is organized to address needs of different audiences, such as: groups , faculty, students, administrators, researchers, and policy makers.  Visitors/ members of the audience may contribute to an on-going discussion or initiate a new one.

•  CCCOER WEBINARS

The popular Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) webinars, feature leaders and practitioners in an open education environment. The equivalence of this opened education of that to community college faculty, students, and staff. Recent webinar topics include: Finding Open Textbooks and Fostering Faculty Adoptions; A Primer on Open Licenses and Intellectual Property; OER Impact Research Faculty and Student Voices; Open Textbook Publishing and Adoptions; California Community Colleges Share It Forward with CC-BY; Fostering Open Policies on Your Campus and Beyond; OER and Open Textbook Adoption and Sustainability; and, Libraries Lead the Way: Open Courses, OER, and Open Policy.

• COURSES IN STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)

o   Great Courses and Teachers in STEM

o   Featured Courses by Great Teachers

• OPEN TEXTBOOKS

Audience/visitors may view open textbooks under the following subject areas:

Anthropology & Archaeology	Engineering & Electronics	Music
Art	English & Composition	Philosophy
Biology & Genetics	Health & Nursing	Physics
Business	History	Political Science
Chemistry	Languages & Communications	Psychology
Computer Science	Literature	Science
Economics	Law	Sociology
Education	Math	Statistics & Probability

OPEN EDUCATION CONSORTIUM COURSES - BY MAJOR CATEGORIES (& NO. OF SUB-CATEGORIES)

Arts & Design (with 5 sub-categories)	Language & Culture (2 – English (1); Others (11))
Business & Management (16)	Math & Logic (4)
Computer Science (16)	Personal Development (14)
Education & Training (2)	Science (10)
Engineering (3)	Social Sciences (5)
Health & Medicine (5)	Sports & Leisure (6)
Humanities (4)

ARE OPEN EDUCATION CONSORTIUM COURSES FREE?

Yes, Open Education Consortium online courses can be audited for free by anyone with an internet connection. However, if students want to receive a verified certificate, they have to pay a fee.  For example, for the 13-week MIT course “Supply Chain Design” that could be accessed via the Open Education Consortium may require a fee of $150 for a verified certificate. This is an advanced level Engineering course with videos and transcripts in English and  it requires 8-12 hrs/wk of studies.

WHAT NEXT?

For more information, please kindly check out the Open Education Consortium website via the link given below.  However, to start exploring the courses offered via the Consortium, please click here.

Open Education Consortium website: http://www.oeconsortium.org/   

Posted by: Dr. Nat Tuivavalagi

The MIT OpenCourseWare: A free, popular, web-based publication of 2,389 MIT courses, getting over 2 million visits a month

WHAT IS THE MIT OPENCOURSEWARE?

The MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is an initiative from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This program was announced on April 4, 2001. The program allows all of the educational materials from its undergraduate – and graduate-level courses to be put online, openly available to anyone, anywhere. As such, the MIT OpenCourseWare is actually a large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course materials.

You don't have to register for anything; you just go to the site and access the materials. There is no supervision.. You can explore whatever you want to learn whenever you want to learn it.  The initiative has inspired more than 250 other institutions to make their course materials available as open educational resources through the Open Education Consortium.

ARE THE COURSES REALLY FREE?

The MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of  all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses available on the Web, free of charge, to any user in the world. MIT OCW receives an average of over 2 million web site visits per month from more than 215 countries and territories worldwide. To date, more than 220 million visitors have accessed the free MIT educational materials on the site or in translation.  Courses at the MIT OpenCourseWare are available freely in line with the MIT mission.

MIT MISSION

The mission of MIT is to advance students knowledge and educate students in courses such as: science, technology, and other areas of studies that will best serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century. MIT seek to develop  each  member  of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.

MIT OPENCOURSEWARE - SOME MILESTONES

·         March 7, 2017:  MIT OCW welcomes over 220 million visitors; 

·         July 23, 2012:  MIT OpenCourseWare selected one of best free reference web sites for 2012 by American Library Association;

·         February 29, 2012:  MIT OpenCourseWare teams up with Flat World Knowledge to combine free texts and free course materials; 

·         August 25, 2010:  TIME Magazine selects MIT OpenCourseWare as one of the 50 best websites of 2010;

·         July 29, 2010: MIT OpenCourseWare was named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as a recipient of the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) for promoting exceptional online materials that are available free of charge to science educators;

·         December 3, 2008: OCW welcomes 50 million visitors;

·         2007: Virtually the entire MIT curriculum published online;

·         June 18, 2004: MIT received honors from three magazines, and several others in the MIT community were recognized for individual achievements, including physics professor, Walter Lewin, and math professor, Gilbert Strang who have course materials on MIT OCW and who have individually received more than 1 million visits;

·         2002: First MIT OCW site established with 50 courses on it;

·         2000: MIT proposed the OpenCourseWare;

·         1999: MIT considered how to use the internet to fulfill their mission.

FUNDING

MIT OCW was originally funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT. Currently, MIT OCW is supported by MIT, corporate underwriting, major gifts, and donations from site visitors.  As of 2013, the annual cost of running MIT OCW was about $3.5 million. MIT's goal for the next decade is to increase their reach ten-fold and to secure funding for the expansion.

Site Statistics

MIT OCW is accessed by a broadly international population of educators and learners. MIT OpenCourseWare receives over 2 million visits each month. These visits come from all over the world, with more than half coming from countries outside of North America:

MIT OPENCOUSEWARE – TYPES OF AUDIENCES / VISITORS

Educators  17%

Students  30%

Independent Learners  50%

Audiences Use MIT OPENCOURSEWARE RESOURCES FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

Educators use resources …

To improve personal knowledge 31%	To find reference material for their students 15%
To learn new teaching methods 23%	To develop curriculum for their dept./school 8%
To incorporate OCW materials into a course 20%	Other 3%

Students use resources …

To enhance personal knowledge 46%	To plan a course of study 16%
To complement a current course 34%	Other 4%

Self-Learners use resources …

To explore areas outside professional field 40%	To keep current with devpts. In their field 17%
To review basic concepts in prof. field 18%	To complete a work-related project or task 4%
To prepare for future course of study 18%	Other 3%

MIT OPENCOURSEWARE - ONLINE TRAFFIC / SITE VISITS

Site Traffic Measure	Total	February, 2017
Total Visits	229,807,626	1,921,836
Total unique visitors	145,543,926	1,280,513
MIT.EDU Visits	2,758,688	21,461
Highlights for High School Visits	5,080,616	34,379
OCW Scholar Visits	19,340,725	243,699
Page Views	1,271,109,315	7,720,709
ZIP Downloads	25,930,070	130,006

FEATURED SITES AT MIT OCW WEBSITE

Highlights for High School	MIT+K12 Videos
OCW Educator	Teaching Excellence at MIT
MIT Crosslinks and OCW	Outreach@MIT
MITx and Related OCW Courses	Open Education Consortium

COURSES

As of February 2017, over 2,380 courses are available online. While a few of these were limited to chronological reading lists and discussion topics, a majority provided homework problems and exams (often with solutions) and lecture notes. Some courses also included interactive web demonstrations in Java, complete textbooks written by MIT professors, and streaming video lectures.

As of February 2017, 92 courses included complete video lectures. The videos were available in streaming mode, but could also be downloaded for viewing offline. All video and audio files were also available thru iTunes U and the Internet Archives.

COURSES: TOPICS (11) & SUB-TOPICS (117)

Business (17 sub-topics)	Mathematics (11 sub-topics)
Energy (11 sub-topics)	Science (5 sub-topics)
Engineering (13 sub-topics)	Social Science (12 sub-topics)
Fine Arts (7 sub-topics)	Society (10 sub-topics)
Health and Medicine (21 sub-topics)	Teaching and Education (4 sub-topics)
Humanities (6 sub-topics)	---

MIT DEPARTMENTS OFFERING Audio/Video Lectures VIA MIT OPENCOURSEWARE

Aeronautics and Astronautics	Global Studies and Languages
Anthropology	Health Sciences and Technology
Architecture	History
Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation	Linguistics and Philosophy
Biological Engineering	Literature
Biology	Materials Science and Engineering
Brain and Cognitive Sciences	Mathematics
Chemical Engineering	Mechanical Engineering
Chemistry	Media Arts and Sciences
Civil and Environmental Engineering	Music and Theater Arts
Comparative Media Studies	Nuclear Science and Engineering
Comparative Media Studies/Writing	Physics
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences	Science, Technology, and Society
Economics	Sloan School of Management
Edgerton Center (Energy)	Supplemental Resources
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science	Urban Studies and Planning
Engineering Systems Division	Writing and Humanistic Studies
Experimental Study Group

HOW TO FIND COURSES AT THE MIT OPENCOURSEWARE WEBSITE

Find by Topic	New Courses
Find by Course Number	Most Visited Courses
Find by Department	OCW Scholar Courses
Instructional Approach	This Course at MIT
Teaching Materials	Supplemental Resources
Audio/Video Courses	Translated Courses
Courses with Subtitles	View All Courses
Online Textbooks

WHAT NEXT?

As mentioned, courses at the MIT OpenCourseWare are available at no cost.  To find out more about this opportunity or to explore the available courses and identify one that you might want to try out, please click here.

Posted by Dr. Nat Tuivavalagi

UDACITY – A 1.6 million-user platform for accessing free & high-quality online courses in computer science, programming, and other subject areas

UDACITY HISTORY

Udacity is the outgrowth of free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University (Wikipedia, 2017). In a Stanford University experiment, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" course online to anyone interested, at no charge and over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled.  Not much later, Udacity was born.

With headquarters in Mountain View, California, Udacity is a for-profit educational organization, founded by Sebastian Thrun – with David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky. The program offers massive open online courses (MOOCs).  Udacity has partnered with companies such as:  AT&T, Cloudera, Salesforce, Autodesk,  Google, Hack Reactor (a popular and prestigious coding bootcamp), Facebook, and MongoDB. Udacity won’t disclose their earnings. However, Rao (2016), reported that one source previously pegged the company’s annual revenue to be around $24 million, and that Udacity has recently become one of technology's newest unicorns—meaning they recently achieved a value of $1 billion.

MISSION

The Udacity mission is to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. They believe that higher education is a basic human right, and they seek to empower their students to advance their education and careers. The program accomplishes their mission by teaching students skills that industry employers are looking for, at a fraction of the cost of traditional schools.

LEADERSHIP

Sebastian Thrun, (the Stanford professor and Google roboticist) who founded Udacity has been referred to as “the Godfather of free online education.”  In November 2012, he won the Smithsonian American Ingenuity in Education Award for his work with Udacity.  His work has a romantic, populist flair and has also been referred to as “arguably the most famous scientist in the world.”  He designed and built robots around human problems, and gave them accessible names. Rhino, part of his thesis project at the University of Bonn, provided guided tours at the local museum. During a stint at Carnegie Mellon University, Thrun developed Pearl, a Jetsons-like “nursebot” with a human-looking face, to assist in elder-care facilities. His greatest achievement was Stanley, the autonomous car that won Stanford a $2 million Defense Department prize and won Thrun the notice of Google cofounder Larry Page.

Udacity's founder Sebastian Thrun stepped down as chief executive officer in April 2016. This  made way for Vishal Makhijani, the company's chief operating officer and a Yahoo executive, to become Udacity's new CEO (Rao, 2016).  Thrun remains as President and Chairman of Udacity and continues to work full-time at Udacity, focusing on innovation.

A CHANGE IN APPROACH TO MASS EDUCATION

Thrun initially founded Udacity in 2012 by putting free college courses online to make learning more accessible. However, the college partnerships failed, and the company detoured into offering courses, partnering with Facebook and Google, as well as certifications for workers who want to beef up their technical skills or learn new ones.

“Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather of free online education, changes course”  Max Chafkin (2013).  This article describes Thrun’s change in approach towards mass education as a result of  the continually failing rates of MOOCs students.  Thrun announced that Udacity, which originally focused on offering university-style courses, had a "lousy product" and that the service was pivoting to focus more on vocational courses for professionals and "nanodegrees."

UDACITY’S NANODEGREE PROGRAM

In 2014, Udacity introduced  “Nanodegree,” a paid intensive certification course training people for technical jobs such as software development.  Udacity has expanded this program from the U.S. to India and China.  The "Nanodegree" program was designed to teach programming skills needed to qualify for an entry-level IT position at AT&T.  A Nanodegree, provided by Udacity and AT&T among other partners, is an online certification that you can earn in 6-12 months (10-20 hours/week) for $200/month (Rauch, 2014; Morell, 2015).

Nanodegrees seem to be targeted towards new generations of young programmers who are about to step into college or feel disenfranchised with their college/post-college experience and disappointed with its ROI (return on investment). Furthermore, Udacity also wants students who are already working to earn certificates so they will be happier in their careers.

Since Nanodegrees are produced in collaboration with tech companies, students are expected to be up to date on terms of technologies used.  In 2014 several hundred computer science students around the world began taking classes for an online master’s degree program being jointly offered by Udacity and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech professors taught the courses and handled admissions and accreditation, and students received a Georgia Tech diploma. Udacity hosted the course material, while expenses were covered by AT&T.

COURSE FORMAT

Each course consists of  video lectures with closed captioning, integrated quizzes (to help students understand concepts and reinforce ideas), as well as follow-up homework which promote a "learn by doing" model. Programming classes use the Python language; programming assignments are graded using an automated grading programs on the Udacity servers.

ENROLLMENT

Udacity has 1.6 million users. Founded in June 2011, by the summer of 2012, Udacity had students in 203 countries - with the greatest number in the United States (42 percent), India (7 percent), Britain (5 percent), and Germany (4 percent).  Udacity students range from 13-year-olds to 80-year-olds. Advanced 13-year-olds are able to complete multiple, higher-level computer science courses.

PROGRAMS AND COURSES

Featured Programs / Subject Areas

Artificial Intelligence	Building Websites
Data Science	Develop for Mobile
Machine Learning	Develop for Virtual Reality
Self-driving Car Technology	Predictive Analytics
Programming Basics	Others

Courses (173)

Programming (100)	Art & Design (6)
Computer Science (43)	Science (2)
Mathematics (10)	Social Science (1)
Business & Management (10)	Education & Teaching (1)

RELATIVE COSTS

In 2014, the Georgia Institute of Technology launched the first "massive online open degree" program (MOOD)  in computer science by partnering with Udacity and AT&T - providing a master's degree upon completion.  Fees were substantial–$6,600 for the equivalent of a three-semester course of study–but still less than one-third of what an in-state student would pay at Georgia Tech, and one-seventh of the tuition charged to an out-of-state student.

HOW TO ACCESS UDACITY COURSES FOR FREE

Udacity students and graduates have shared their views and experiences on Quora (2017). Quora program  allows the student to speak of various topics including “how to access Udacity courses for free:” Students have to pay to take part in a Nanodegree, however,  anyone  can do all the supporting courses at no charge.  A Nanodegree requires the completion of a number of projects (e.g., eight projects for the Android Nanodegree), and for each project, students have to do a number of “Supporting Courses”.All of these courses can be accessed and studied for free.  Thus the material (video lessons and quizzes) for the courses associated with Nanodegree programs are always free. To find out more, go to a given Nanodegree curriculum page (for instance  Front-End Web Developer Nanodegree), scroll down to the "Nanodegree structure" section, click on the courses listed by "Prepare for this project with" and access the free course material from there.

Udacity courses are free, regardless of whether they are part of the Nanodegree curriculum or not! The courses are open to anyone and begin studies at any time.  The challenge is students need instruction (which is not straightforward) to access these materials for free.  First of all, you will need an account. Sign up is very simple by entering an email address and setting a password you have created your account.  The next step is to go through the Nanodegrees and check out their curriculum/syllabus.  The Nanodegrees are simply a combination of smaller courses. You can search for them individually in the catalog of courses.

You can’t access the Nanodegree program as is, but you can access the smaller courses for free here: All Courses and Nanodegree Programs | Udacity .  So, by completing the smaller courses  in a way, you would have completed the Nanodegree. You may then take an overview of the that Nanodegree program from Udacity’sGitHub and complete the projects on your own. You may also compare your project to those of students who have completed that Nanodegree because their projects are available on GitHub.

RECOMMENDATION & CONCLUSION

You may audit one or more Udacity course(s) for free and then do a nanodegree if you are happy with your Udacity experience.  If cost is an issue, just continue auditing courses for free while expanding your technical capability thereby making yourself eligible for higher-level training or a better jobs. 

To explore what Udacity has to offer, please click here.  Check out the “REFERENCES” below to explore the articles referred to in this posting.

REFERENCES

Chafkin, Max. 2017. Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course. Available online at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb.  Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Morell, Chris. 2015. NANODEGREE PROGRAMS - Udacity Nanodegree Reviews: Your Questions Answered. Available online at: http://blog.udacity.com/2015/03/udacity-nanodegree-reviews-your-questions-answered.html .   Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Quora, 2017. How can I access Udacity’s nanodegree courses for free.  Available online at: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-access-Udacitys-nano-degree-courses-for-free . Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Rao, Leena. 2016. Sebastian Thrun Steps Down As Udacity’s CEO. Available online at: http://fortune.com/2016/04/22/sebastian-thrun-udacity/  .  Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Rauch, Joseph. 2014. FAQ: What is a Udacity Nanodegree? Hype or Hope?

 http://www.skilledup.com/articles/faq-udacity-nanodegree-hype-hope .   Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Wikipedia, 2017. Udacity.  Available online at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udacity#cite_note-npr-3 . Retrieved March 1, 2017.

Posted by Dr. Nat Tuivavalagi