Lets get smarter

[wemsler]

I am sure a lot of you know about this stuff already however I would like to post it in one post so that everyone has a place where they can access it as a resource. Ok so I guess I will talk a little about how this started for me; this summer I got an internship at a bio fuels startup and i have never taken an organic chem. class in my life. I used the Khan Academy to literally learn a 2 semesters worth of O chem on my own time. It got me thinking that there are other major gaps in my education; I am a terrible writer and speller. So I investigated some other places where i could fill these gaps and learn new things. Here are the results of my findings.

Open course ware
A lot of really great universities offer a ton of their classes for free online.
Here are 2 sites that can help you find open course ware from smaller OCW sites
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
http://www.academicearth.com
The big OCW schools
Yale - http://oyc.yale.edu/
Harvard - http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses/
MIT - http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
Columbia - http://itunes.columbia.edu/
Stanford - http://itunes.stanford.edu/
Princeton - http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/lectures/
Boston College - http://frontrow.bc.edu/programs/
UC Berkeley - http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
UC Irvine - http://ocw.uci.edu/
Carnegie Mellon - http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Tufts - http://ocw.tufts.edu/
Michigan - http://open.umich.edu/
Notre Dame - http://ocw.nd.edu/
Utah State- http://ocw.usu.edu/


Specific course materials
Cornell / Quantum Physics - http://bethe.cornell.edu/
Johns Hopkins / Public Health - http://ocw.jhsph.edu/topics.cfm
University of Washington / Computer Science - http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/course-webs.html
Indiana Purdue (IUPUI) / Computer Science - http://wally.cs.iupui.edu/wallyindex.html
Duke University / Law - http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/lectures/
Harvard / Medicine - http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/public/
Oxford / Mathematics - http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/opencourseware/

Talks and lectures
FORA.tv - http://www.fora.tv/
TED - http://www.ted.com

Khan Academy
I feel this site deserves its' own section just for the way it is structured. Basically you can get a FULL education here. It is structured in a way where it makes sure you have learned all the prerequisites for what you are trying to learn and it will fill in any gaps for you. If you have children or are an educator seriously use this site to help your kids in their education.
http://www.khanacademy.org/


EDIT- If you have other good resources for learning for free online please post them.

[Corba]

i love the khan academy and i think i've posted about it here before. congrats on internship. how did you incorporate what you've learned on khan academy into your resume?

[wemsler]

i love the khan academy and i think i've posted about it here before. congrats on internship. how did you incorporate what you've learned on khan academy into your resume?

Education is changing with the internet and becoming more accessible with this i am sure how people list their qualifications will change as well.

The only area of the Khan Academy that gives feedback as far as subject mastery goes is the mathematics section. It doesn't give you a grade either it simply tells you if you have gotten 10 questions right in a row, which in their mind constitutes subject mastery. I disagree with this notion fundamentally, If you can answer 10 computer generated questions that simply change the numbers that doesn't qualify for anything other than to answer computer generated questions that use the same exact method.

I really can't list it as a technical elective on my resume since there was no subjective evaluation or comparison to other students to see how "well" I learned it. There are tons of things I and others have listed on our resumes that we have never learned in a class or on a job such as software knowledge, programming languages, personal skills, or lab skills.

I think someone who works in HR or hires people in technical fields would be better suited to answer this question.


EDIT- Lots of universities export a lot of their 100 level classes to big online education companies so i am not so sure how this is any different than the khan academy. My school has all th 100 math classes exported other than calculus. If any of you have had to go through the hell that is learning chem with Alexis or doing mastering physics you will know that this is significantly more painful than learning on the khan academy.

[Near]

The only problem with education is you can't teach experience.

[Zorblak]

Apropos of the Khan Academy, I came across this article today taking Khan to task for some serious-sounding shortcomings of his site. Never having used it myself, I can't say how accurate this post is, but the points he makes have some serious implications for people using this site to provide education, rather than to supplement it.

http://www.mathalicious.com/2011/05/29/a...-sal-khan/