These types of sites, TED, Khan Academy, etc. get me so excited for the future. Unfortunately the phrase 'everyone, everywhere' comes with that little asterisk: *with high-speed internet access. I think a movement to get internet to 'everyone, everywhere' needs to happen along side this internet education movement to be as potentially world-changing as I'd like to imagine it. Not that the education movement alone isn't great, there is a huge gap between being able to afford high-speed internet and affording/getting into a good college.
The fact that this will be offered for credit at accredited universities with physical campuses is really intriguing. Often efforts like this have difficulty getting the institutional buyin that will lead to real change.<p>As a side note, they could have chosen a name with a better acronym -- FU already has meaning attached to it for a lot of people.
I can't say for Harvard or Bard, but at Yale, this course is a seminar. You can watch the videos whenever you want, but you also have physical class on Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:20, where you'll discuss the readings and the professors (Peter Salovey and Adam Glick) will try to make you think in an interdisciplinary way.<p>Although the online aspect and all that is great, I think this is novel for another reason. Charlie Munger, vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway, has often talked about building a latticework of mental models i.e. take the big ideas from various disciplines, and use those models to solve problems. This course is basically a physical version of what he's espoused his whole life.<p>I'm definitely going to try to get into this course - sounds awesome!
> "Floating University
subscriptions will also be available to the general public with full course packs and video lectures via the Internet."<p>Any idea what this is going to cost?
I'm confused as to how this works. Is it just pre-recorded videos? The site says "no homework, no tests". If you just watch the videos, how does it reinforce what you've learned? Is there any interaction with the instructor?
Cool. But is the future of education really having professors give lectures, except now it's online?<p>Here are some brainstorm ideas for alternatives:<p>* Allow anyone, not just existing professors, create a course on any topic and of any length. May the best teachers win.<p>* Allow and encourage students to make their own lectures and courses.<p>* Enable and encourage two-way communication. Perhaps people can post responses to other people's lectures.
There is a big opportunity here, because higher education seems to be facing a crisis. Due to big increases in the costs of university education, combined with the reasonable reticence of students to take on large amounts of debt which may take decades to repay, for the first time it seems possible that the next generation may be less well educated than their parents - unless something changes.
Interesting. Although I wonder why the topics are so heavily biased toward the humanities... One would think that a view of the sciences would be equally important.