What are MOOCs? On Sunday, Thomas Friedman of The World Is Flat fame had this to say about this recent development in higher education:
“Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC.”
At edX, a MOOC partnership involving MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and others, registration for the Spring semester is under way. If you’re not too busy already, you can register for free classes on Greek mythology, statistical analysis, environmental studies, introductory computer programming, and even the idea of justice.
Remember too, that edX is only one of many, many organizations offering unprecedented access to new knowledge. Look into it. This is your chance to count your brain among the billions to be unlocked by this new approach to learning.