Stanford University has launched a series of 10 free, online computer science (CS) and electrical engineering courses. The courses span an introduction to computer science and an introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, among other topics.
The free courses are being offered “to students and educators around the world” under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE). Each course comprises downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts.
The courses are nearly identical to what’s offered to enrolled Stanford students, according to the University. However, those taking courses through SEE are not eligible to receive Stanford credit for them.
Course participants do not register, and have no direct contact with Stanford instructors or professors. They do, however, have the ability to communicate online with other SEE students. A detailed SEE FAQ is available here.
The University says SEE’s initial courses include “one of Stanford’s most popular engineering sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford undergraduates, and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering.”
Specifically, SEE’s first 12 courses are…
- Introduction to Computer Science:
- Artificial Intelligence:
- Linear Systems and Optimization:
- Additional School of Engineering Courses:
Course videos can be viewed using YouTube, iTunes, Vyew, WMV Torrent, and MP4 Torrent. Here, for example, is lecture 1 of the Introduction to Robotics course, as a YouTube video:
Introduction to Robotics, Lecture 1
(Click image to view)
The SEE courses have been released under a Creative Commons license, in order to “[encourage] educators and learners around the world to incorporate the video courses and materials into their educational endeavors and to form virtual communities around the classes,” the University says.
The license under which the courses are being released is the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. According to the University, this license stipulates that “original content [can] be the remixed, tweaked, and built into new non-commercial content as long as the original source is credited and the new creations are distributed under the identical terms.”
As noted, the courses are nearly identical to the ones offered to Stanford’s registered students. However, some content has been omitted in cases where a copyright holder’s consent could not be obtained for releasing the material under the Creative Commons license. There are also “a few other exceptions,” according to the University.
Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford Engineering School, says the University is “excited to extend our teaching and learning opportunities worldwide through SEE. We hope SEE will enable a broad range of people to learn, to share their ideas and to make their own contributions to knowledge.”
For further information, visit the program’s landing page at Stanford Engineering Everywhere.