Stanford University is on a roll lately offering a wide variety of free online courses to anyone, either through iTunes U on topics like iOS 5 Development, or through self-contained courses conducted entirely from the web that are free to enroll in. The latter is the case here, with Stanford offering 10 new online courses that are completely free to the public. Each class is taught by a renowned Stanford professor and is focused on technology and computer science, although two concentrate on the entrepreneurial side of things as well.
All classes start January 2012, so enroll now if you want to start learning from one of the best universities in the world:
- CS 101 – Essentials of Computer Science for a zero experience audience
- Cryptography – Protecting information in computer systems
- Game Theory – Mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational agents
- Human-Computer Interaction – Designing technologies and interfaces that bring people joy rather than frustration
- Lean Launchpad – Turning an idea into a company
- Machine Learning – Getting computers to act without explicit direction
- Natural Language Processing – Algorithms and technology for dealing with human language data
- Probabilistic Graphical Models – Practical and theoretical methods of manipulating probability distributions
- Software as a Service – Engineering fundamentals for Agile SaaS development using Ruby on Rails
- Technology Entrepreneurship – Creating a successful startup
You won’t get college credit for completing the courses unless you’re a Stanford student, but they will provide you with a statement of accomplishment and a performance rating compared to other online students, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to learn something.
Free courses from Stanford University is a freakishly good deal, where undergrad tuition alone is about $40,000 a year!
Stanford has offered this style of online learning in the past, recently offering a freeonline “Intro to Databases” course conducted on the web. That class is wrapping up so if you enrolled in that one, these classes are a great opportunity to further relevant knowledge.
Not to be outdone, Harvard is offering Intro to Computer Science as a free self paced class too
