I was skeptical when I heard that Stanford would be offering its courses online for free. Why would a prestigious university like Stanford give away its product? Well, I recently audited its Technology Entrepreneurship I course with Professor Chuck Eesley to see for myself. It was a well-designed course – very inspirational, full of usable nuggets of wisdom and experience, and engaging lectures and guest speakers. I looked forward to the release of each new batch of videos and found myself wanting to read more on the subject-of-the-week. For those students who chose to participate in the course by completing assignments and projects, he had a way for them to post their work for collaborative review. In one of the videos, it was mentioned that about 37,000 people were taking the course from around the world. Very impressive!
While taking this course, I also “dropped in” on other Stanford online courses over the past couple of months, specifically programming and cryptography courses. They have all had great speakers and have made each topic easier to understand while also making the subjects very interesting.
These courses gave me the opportunity to see inside this prestigious university. I can see now why it is always ranked high on every educational metric. As a marketing tool, these courses give potential students a chance to see what Stanford would be like. It also expands recognition of the Stanford brand worldwide. I’m glad that Stanford is offering its classes to the public, and I look forward to the next one. Are you planning to take any classes this year? If so, which are you interested in?
