Three elite US universities are to join a group offering some of their courses online for free. The short lectures, interactive quizzes and automatically graded exercises, from Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, will be delivered via Coursera, a California-based online education company. Although they will not give students credit towards a degree, the company, founded this year by two Stanford University computer-science professors, is considering offering completion certificates. The 12 Pennsylvania courses planned include calculus, modern and contemporary American poetry and Greek and Roman mythology, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “It allows us to give access to high-quality courses to millions of people,” the university’s president, Amy Gutmann, told the newspaper.
Source: Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=419709&c=1