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Health & Fitness

Take advantage of MOOCs this summer

As college bound students, you may have already packed your summer schedule full of summer school, camps and activities. In between the school work and array of summer activities, you may still benefit from some real, quality learning through a healthy dosage of MOOCs, while beating the summer heat in the comfort of your own home.

MOOCs, or Massive Online Open Courses, are just what they sound like, online courses that are open to the masses, utilizing short lecture videos, problem sets as well as large-scale user interactions through forums, live streaming and social media to create vast learning communities.

 An article in the November 2012 issue of the New York Times called 2012 “The Year of the MOOC“. Despite the controversy over whether MOOCs open the door to “Ivy Leagues for the Masses”, the major providers, associated with top universities, do offer a wealth of valuable information for eager learners, among them Udacity, Coursera, and Khan Academy.

 I personally have signed up for six fascinating courses on Coursera, which was founded in 2011 and has grown to 3.6 million users to date. They have partnered up with 70 universities, among them some of the biggest names in higher education, such as Princeton and Columbia, to offer over 300 college courses that you can take online for free and a growing number of courses that offer college credit for a small fee. Class format include short video lectures and weekly assignments. The virtual platform allows distinguished professors to teach thousands of students, each learning at their own pace and using interactive exercises to test their knowledge.

From the social sciences to mathematics, Coursera aims to move traditional classroom lectures outside of campus buildings and develop peer assessment. These courses cover a wide variety of subjects and are huge benefit for students in high school that are looking to build a resume and delve deeper into some interest areas that they might be pursuing as a college major or minor, so I strongly recommend that all of you high school students click over to Coursera to check out the courses. The signup process is painless and takes about 30 seconds, then you are free to explore some of the great free education opportunities that are developing today.

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