MIT is one of many schools that offers free online courses. They are launching MITx, an e-learning program that will offer certificates to students who have mastered the course material. It will not be an MIT certificate, but rather one from a new organization. There will be a modest sum to receive the certificate.

This is just another way schools are reaching out and trying to get more students to take their online courses. Usually, there is no certificate or acknowledgement that you took the course.

Read more here: http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/mit_to_offer_certificates.html

Free online courses from universities seem to be a growing trend. I posted last school year about Einztein, a site that helps you find free online courses, and I just learned that Stanford University is offering 14 free online courses starting next month. (thanks to Open Culture for the info). Major universities, including Yale and MIT, offer online courses or course materials for free. These are great resources for students and educators.

Each of Stanford's 14 free online courses will include quizzes, discussion groups with instructors, video clips and feedback. The courses start in January and February and you can enroll now.

Here is a list of the 14 courses (from Open Culture's article):

Technology Entrepreneurship
Making Green Buildings
Anatomy
Information Theory
Design and Analysis of Algorithms I
The Lean Launchpad
Cryptography
Computer Science 101
Software Engineering for SaaS
Human Computer Intereaction
Natural Language Processing
Game Theory
Probabilistic Graphical Models
Machine Learning

Academic Earth is a site similar to Einztein. It is a collection of links to free online courses from a variety of schools and web sites.

You can search for courses by subject, university, or instructor. Subjects include Astronomy, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Education, Engineering, Law, Math, Physics, Psychology and much more. Universities include Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Yale and more.

This is a good resource for finding courses for yourself, brushing up on material, or having students use it as a supplemental classroom resource.

Einztein is a great site that provides a listing of free online courses from around the world. The courses include text, audio, video and multimedia. The courses are all recommended by the team based on the quality of the course. They don't host the courses or create them, just link them in a searchable database and allow for comments and suggestions.

The catalog is searchable and includes courses from Stanford University, the British Museum, Cornell, Duke, MIT and many more. You can search by topic and even filter by course provider and media type. There are recommendations and reviews of the courses and even some suggestions for related courses.

They are working on expanding Einztein to have more of a "social network" feel and incorporate more suggestions, comments, and even allow people to work together and get help for the courses.

This could be great for teachers looking to expand their knowledge, to use in the classroom or to have students use it as extra help. I've viewed some of the material and it is very good.

Here are some examples of some of the courses: