Next month, March 5th to be exact, the first MITx course will begin. The online course, Circuits and Electronics, will be offered for free and give students the opportunity to earn a certificate of content mastery through an online assessment. MITx is a promising program for students interested in the courses offered. The content mastery certificate opportunity takes open learning to the next step beyond simply watching lectures and accessing course hand-outs. Hopefully, we’ll see more opportunities like it in the future. In the meantime you can take advantage of some great open course materials to enhance your own instruction.

Design a course using Open Learning Initiative resources.
The Open Learning Initiative offers free high-quality courses created by Carnegie Mellon University. There are courses available in Statistics, Engineering, Science, Economics, French, and more. All of the courses are open to anyone that wants to give the courses a try. Users can create an account to track their progress or users can just jump into the course materials without creating an account. In addition to offering open learning opportunities to students, the Open Learning Initiative provides instructors with course packages that they can use for free. To explore the free options offered to educators, request an OLI Instructor Account.

Five YouTube Channels to Supplement Your Classroom Instruction
Even without a formal assessment system in place, open university course materials can be a good supplement to your own instruction. While video lectures aren’t the most exciting things for high school students to watch or listen to, they can provide some thought-provoking moments and information to go beyond standard high school offerings. Here are five YouTube channels that offer good instructional content for high school and college students.
MIT – Course Playlists
Stanford – Course Playlists
Yale – Course Playlists
Harvard University Playlists
The Open University Course Playlists