Site Review: Free College Classes

The other day, I ran onto this website that I found very interesting.  Of course, it’s the name that hooks you, but, believe it or not, the name rings true.

http://www.freecollegeclasses.org/ provides a wealth of information about courses from MIT, Stanford, UC Berkley, Carnegie-Mellon University, Tufts and others that you can take for free.  Yes, free.  You can actually have access to almost every class offered by MIT for free.  

So, I’m sure you’re asking, “What’s the catch?”  That was my initial response.  I figured this was another website that was trying to hook you into filling out a form for online courses from a “matching service”, but it wasn’t.

Here’s the catch.  You can take any course that MIT offers free of charge.  You can also take any number of courses offered by the other universities mentioned free of charge.  You will not get credit or a degree from those universities for your course completion.  

… But, if you are attending another college or university, you may be able to get credit from that university.  All of this information is available through links at this site.

More importantly to me, the coursework is available.  I spend a lot of time educating myself.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, to me, the learning is more important than the piece of paper you get at the end.  Having over 2000 courses from MIT available to me is a boon.

Now, there are several other helpful things on this site for college students and educators.  If you’re doing online research, they offer 100 Wikipedia Alternatives and 67 Google Alternatives for Internet Research.  There is also their list of the 100 Best Education Blogs (and no, I’m not on the list … yet).

On top of that, there is an expanding list of articles pointing potential students down the path to their chosen careers.  The site is also clean, simple and easy to navigate.

If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to check out this site and explore the wealth of knowledge available to you.  They’ve done all of the research for you.  Now, all you have to do is enjoy.

Am I Really This Old?

My dad used to play Honkey Tonks before I was born.  He loved Ray Price, Buck Owens, Marty Robbins and the like.  I grew up listening to Country and Western music on the radio in his truck and at get-togethers where he and his friends would play.

My mother listened to ‘50’s Rock and Roll.  She loved Fats Domino.  She loved “Walkin’ to New Orleans”.  I would play all of her old 45’s and albums every time I got the chance.

The one thing musically that they had in common was their hatred of the music I listened to as a teen-ager and young adult, Heavy Metal and Hard Rock.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that I don’t listen to as much Heavy Metal as I used to.  I’ve realized that most of what I called Hard Rock is now considered Classic Rock.  I’ve also started listening to a lot more Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and the like.  When I do find new music that I like, most of it is what is now considered Country.

So what does this have to do with going back to college?  Ok, I’m getting to that.

In most cases, when you go back to college as an adult, even if you take online courses, you will find yourself on a college campus interacting with traditional (read as “young”) students.  This may leave you feeling a little out of place.

Now, I like to think of myself as observant.  What I have noticed about my fellow “adult” students is that they typically fit into one of two categories.  Some try to “fit in” with younger students and some try to avoid them at all costs.  In my opinion, neither strategy works very often.  

Here’s what I’ve seen:  If an adult tries to dress or talk like a teen-ager, they often become the target of ridicule by the very same students with which they are trying to “fit in”.  No one wants to see you dressed like Lady GaGa or Katy Perry anymore than you wanted to see your mom dressed like Madonna or Cindy Lauper.  It doesn’t matter how “in shape” you are.  It doesn’t work.

On the other hand, total avoidance robs you of an opportunity to get a more current perspective and an opportunity to influence the younger generation.  You know, I have to think that my dad would have benefitted if he could have ever learned to appreciate Metallica, but he didn’t.  Occasionally, I would play him parts of songs and ask him what he thought.  Quite often, he would like it until he found out who it was.  Then he wouldn’t.  He missed an opportunity to learn more about me because he avoided my music.  

I think the best approach is to find a middle ground.  Find shared interests that allow you to interact with traditional students without alienating them.  I don’t know how many “youngsters” I’ve introduced to Don Williams and Glen Campbell.  At the same time, I found that I actually enjoyed Skrillex and Tinie Tempah.  I’ve also had the opportunity to know some great people that I otherwise wouldn’t.

Online Courses and Instructor Feedback

Returning to college, I found taking online courses to be more convenient and flexible.  This flexibility allowed me to work around my everyday commitments.  I didn’t have the restriction of a set class time and I could get a lot of the work done ahead of deadlines, which allowed me to spend larger blocks of time with my family.

Unfortunately, I have also experienced a negative side of online courses.  In about 50% of the online courses that I have taken, there is little or no feedback from the instructor.

Your syllabus and course documents are posted. You complete your assignments and upload them into Blackboard, or some other website.  Your grade, often much later, magically appears in the “grade book”.  You are left to guess what you did well and what you could improve on or didn’t understand.
Now, I understand that instructors are busy.  I understand that they are often pressed for time when grading assignments.  I also understand that they are getting paid to teach me, and part of teaching is giving feedback on performance.

I look at it this way:  If I do well on an assignment, it only takes a few seconds to jot down something like “well-written, you have a good grasp of the subject matter” in the comment box when grading the assignment.  If I don’t do well on an assignment, I deserve (because I’m paying for it) to understand what I need to do to improve my performance and understanding.

In one of my recent semesters, I had one instructor in an “easy” course that could not even reply to email questions concerning the ambiguity of her course documents and assignments.  I also had one instructor in a “difficult” course that not only replied quickly to email questions, but would send encouraging emails on his own when you did well on an assignment.  You can’t tell me that the first instructor could not have at least given feedback.

Here are my thoughts:  If you have the opportunity to take courses face-to-face with your instructors, do it.  In my experience, instructors are much more engaged with their traditional course students.  If you need the flexibility of online courses, try to get feedback from advisors and other students on which instructors to choose.