Friday, March 9, 2012

Stanford Offers More Free Online Classes for the World

Stanford Report (CA) (03/06/12) Jamie Beckett

Stanford University is introducing five free online classes in March as the next step in a university initiative to use new technologies to improve education.  The classes follow the launch of pilot classes last fall, which drew more than 350,000 participants.  "Stanford has been a pioneer in online education for many years, and we are pleased to continue expanding and refining our online offerings to benefit both our own students and students around the world," says Stanford University provost John Etchemendy.  Three classes--Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, and Cryptography--will launch March 12, and Game Theory and Probabilistic Graphical Models will launch March 19.  People enrolled in the free classes do not get Stanford credit for their work, but they do receive a statement of accomplishment if they successfully complete a course.  "Advances in video technology, social networks, and collaboration software have put us at an inflection point in technology for higher education," says Stanford professor John Mitchell, who will chair a multidisciplinary faculty committee on educational technology.  The committee will explore some of the complex issues around providing high-quality online education, as well as create an on-campus lab for experimentation.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/march/online-courses-mitchell-030612.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Open Source Web Hosting company