Taking MIT courses for FREE?

You can be an MIT student and it costs NOTHING!!
Yes, finally, my dream can come true!!

OK, this is not an accurate statement. The truth is...

You can get class materials online free of charge! Yes, that's right!
It's called "OpenCourseWare", aka OCW.
Many schools and institutions, including MIT, Yale, and Notre Dame, are posting some courses free online, from syllabus, reading material lists, lecture notes, quizzes, tests, and even audio/video files of actual lectures.

It is like a "distance learning", except it’s free, but no actual credit, degree or certificate.

While I was in college, I did use the computer, but none of professors required us to use computers or even emails for classes (unless it was a computer related class). Everything was an old style; print-outs/hand-outs in classes. Nowadays, many professors use the website and emails extensively, so it’s no surprise that schools are officially posting their materials on their sites for public.

For myself, I did benefit from these online course materials recently. I needed to learn the FEM (finite element method) extensively for my work. I took an introduction course in college, but that was a long time ago, so for the purpose of refreshing my memories and learning new materials, I went online.

After browsing for a while, voila, I found not 1 but 3 FEM courses, from Univ. of Illinois, Univ. of California in San Diego, and Univ. of Colorado, which post pretty much everything, course materials, assignments/tests and its solutions. I was able to study those materials by myself, and I must say, it was much more useful than just buying some textbooks and study those!!

Although it’s quite useful, it’s still lacking something very important: the interactions between teachers and students. Since we are just looking at the computer screen and “observing” the courses, so when we have some questions, we cannot ask anybody (Technically we can email the professor and ask the questions, but they are not obligated to answer those). Besides that, at many times, the teaching in class won’t be “one-way” but “two-ways”. There is no doubt that we will learn much more by being in actual classrooms than watching lecture videos.

So that is why colleges/universities are putting those materials for free. They are sure that they will not lose the applicants just because all the materials are available online.

For general public who are not pursuing a degree, like me, this is a very welcoming change. I personally believe that any knowledge won’t be wasted. And having so many resources online for free is definitely a plus in my life!! It's so cool that I can get to see what MIT students are studying!