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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

High School Online Education: Coursera


Good morning world! It's grey and cloudy this morning. I am down with a sore throat and fever today. What a way to ruin all my plans! God had something else in mind, of course, and now I realize what a blessing this day is.

I was supposed to be at work, but since I am sick, I am stuck at home. It's very difficult to be stuck at home with my project list a mile long, and not be able to do anything. It kills me! So I decided to day would be a good day to begin my school planning instead. After reading through my home school catalogs, I sat at the computer to do some research.

I have been working on investigating colleges for our two older boys, one of which pretty much has made his college choices. Boy #2 is still open to suggestions. Enter Mom. I was looking at the University of Pennsylvania, when I found a link to Coursera, and our lives have been permanently changed forever.

Coursera is an online learning website that offers 

FREE non-credit college courses. 

Yup, FREE! Oh, my gosh! The website is a collaboration between top colleges and universities. All courses are taught by leading professors in each field. These people are amazingly well qualified, let me tell you! They have biographies a mile long! Here are some of the Colleges and Universities involved:

Rice University
Princeton University
University of Virginia
University of Pennsylvania
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of San Francisco
University of Michigan
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
John Hopkins University
University of Washington
California Institute of Technology


There are also a few international schools on the list, such as University of Toronto, and University of Edinburgh. Very impressive!

Again these are non credit classes, which may not be for everyone. However, our plan is to give our students credit for these classes on their high school transcripts. After the course is completed, students receive a certificate of completion from their professor. How cool is that, to get a certificate, completing a college level class, at a top university for FREE??? This will look great on a home school student's high school transcript! Awesome!

Here are some of the classes available:

Biology and Life Sciences
Business and Management
Computer Science
Economics and Finance
Education
Electrical and Materials Engineering
Health and Society and Medical Ethics
Humanities and Social Sciences
Information, Technology and Design
Mathematics
Medicine
Physical and Earth Sciences
Statistics, Data Analysis and Computer Engineering

Most of these categories have very specific courses of study. It's also great way to try out a field of study before going off to college. There are a few general study classes as well. No fees are required to register, and many of the courses do not require the purchase of a text book. Each class runs 6-12 weeks long and requires approximately 5-7 hours of study. 

We registered for several classes today and can't wait for school to start! I love it when that happens!
You can also preview class videos. We liked the Cryptography Class preview, click here to view.

Course Syllabus, practice problems, video lectures and homework information are also available. Fabulous! Less work for Mom!

If you register with someone you know, you can also work on projects together and have outside class discussions, how fun would that be? 

Hope you enjoy this great opportunity, let's hope FREE education is the wave of the future!

Designer Mom


3 comments:

  1. Well that's a neat idea for high school students, or anyone who is just looking to gain more knowledge! Thanks for sharing this with us at Trivium Tuesdays! BTW, I like the new look of your site!

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  2. I am really excited about this! I didn't know they had high school classes available. Thank you very much!

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  3. This blog is very nice information for student who read to online. And want Homework Assignment Help.We want always this information of students. And keep continue sharing this helpful information.

    ReplyDelete