Free Online Learning From Carnegie Mellon University

Today our search for resources for the Free University Project brings us to Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative. The courses here look to be the best organized and presented that I've seen so far. Again, they are not offering a comprehensive catalog of classes. These are generally lower division classes, such as a student might encounter in the first two years of college. An independent student combing the online world for resources might be quite happy with what they find here. In fact these courses might be just what someone needs to get prepared to pass a CLEP test for credit. Categories include:

Engineering Statics

Statistics

Causal and Statistical Reasoning

Modern Biology

Biochemistry

Chemistry

Economics

French

Logic and Proofs

Physics

Empirical Research Methods

Computational Discrete Mathematics

Visual Communication Design

The courses can be accessed here: Open Learning Initiative

Instructional Design Course from Wikiversity

Thinking about creating educational materials? Could you use some help developing or honing skills? Well the people that gave us Wikipedia, and now Wikiversity, have something that might interest you. How about a free, open source, course to help you... "develop the skills needed to design instructional material using media (especially communication technologies) to transfer knowledge as effectively as possible between teachers and learners."? It's a course under construction, but it seems to be taking shape nicely.

Wikiversity is an enthusiastic promoter of the open source education sector. I'm just starting to look at all their offerings and trying to get the measure of what they have done so far. A free, open source, course on instructional design looks like a great place to get started. Check it out here.

The Five Year Party

It's been a while since I was in college so I'm talkin' to folks and reading up on the latest campus happenings. Right now I have the book The Five Year Party, by Craig Brandon. I read a lot of it last night. It's a shocker, but it reveals little that wasn't already happening in the 1970's. Remember Animal House [Blue-ray]? I'm also looking to get my hands on a copy of another book, Why Does College Cost So Much? Judging from the reviews, it looks at the question from the college administrator's point of view, concluding that the cost is high and getting higher because good help (instructors) is expensive. Craig Brandon (The Five Year Party ) has a different conclusion. He believes that academics makes up only 25% of the cost. He attributes the rest to bloated administration and a race to see who can have the most luxurious amenities and extra curricular activities. I think I agree. (text continued below)
Brandon also mentions that in 2009 the state of Pennsylvania began to look at creating schools of higher education minus the frills, like the Greek life, athletics and anything else that doesn't bear directly on learning. Got to look into that too. I'll give a more thorough review when I finish both books.

Curriki: Open Source Curricula for K-12 Education

The Curriki website is the online home of a project to build open source curricula for K-12 students. The site uses the wiki format, that allows the site's users to create and edit parts of the website's content. Users are invited to add content and edit the site to provide the community with resources for teaching.

This is a model that could work just as well for higher learning. And so it's worth investigating.

Not only is the model interesting, the support it's getting is worth noting. When you have someone of the caliber of Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Micro Systems, on your board of directors, as Curriki does, you have a certain measure of credibility.

I've only just had my first look at Curriki. It seems to be chock full of resources, to have good design and lots of tools for navigating the content, but to my mind it's a bit jumbled; maybe a lot jumbled. There's a lot of coursework and related materials to sort through, but my first impression is that it's not very intuitive. It's kinda like some one says to you, here's a really comprehensive list of the parts that make up an automobile, now go forth and build yourself a car.

How about some help making an overall plan for the project?

Often when I find an interesting website I do a quick search on alexa.com to see what kind, and how much traffic the website in question is getting. curriki.com compares in traffic to homeschool.com, which I take to be a major website in this area of interest. Of even more interest is the fact that Curriki has a lot of international traffic. Apparently people in India, Pakistan and Indonesia are interested in the english language curricula served up at curriki.com. When some of the most motivated students in the world take an interest in something education-related it may be a good sign that a closer look is in order. Which I will be doing.

The Free University Project

As I write this the whole world seems to be undergoing revolutionary changes.

All across the Middle East and North Africa people are rising up in an attempt to make big changes. In Wisconsin, where I make my home, protesters are converging on the state capitol in numbers not seen since the Vietnam War. And in the nation's capitol and in the state houses politicians are staring down the barrel of governmental bankruptcy.

Seems like a great time for a revolution in higher education!

And indeed there is such a revolution underway. The Free University Project is a new journalistic enterprise that aims to take the measure of that revolution and to act as champions for it. We invite interested people to join us in using our website and this blog to create a community of like-minded individuals and institutions.

If you've got ideas or want to submit a blog post of your own, post up in the comment section below. After all it's nothing less than the free marketplace of ideas and knowledge that is at issue.

An education conversation overheard at a dinner party

At a recent family gathering, a friend who is a public school teacher was talking with a young nephew of mine. The nephew is a college freshman who is majoring in business. He's having second thoughts about his choice of major. He was an excellent athlete in high school. Now he's thinking that he might want to become a gym teacher and coach. The teacher told him that he'd be required to teach another subject in addition to physical education. He'd need to do this to be considered a serious candidate for the job. Gym teachers often choose social studies, she said. A good strategy would be to choose math instead, she added.

As the conversation continued I learned that gym teachers commonly supplement their physical education duties with social studies teaching. Apparently social studies is seen as an easy subject to teach. Few choose math, she said, because it's perceived as more difficult. A gym teacher who is willing to teach math is more likely to get hired, she offered helpfully.

The nephew replied that he isn't much of a math whiz himself and wondered if he'd make a suitable math teacher. "Not to worry." replied the teacher, "You don't need to be good at math to be a math teacher. Everything you need to know is in the teacher's manual."

So there you have it, in American high schools social studies is a lightweight subject often taught by gym teachers. And math classes are a kind of thin gruel; safe work for teachers without math skills.

I'm sure we can do better than this. The home schooling movement gives me hope. The popular revolutions sweeping the planet give me hope. And now I have hope that the time is right to make a revolution in higher education. The Free University Project is dedicated to that proposition. Stay tuned dear reader.