MIT, Harvard, and Yale have gone Open Access! For those of you who do not know what open access is, basically in a few words it is giving public access to the public domain. RealGoodNews has done a few stories, (Aaron Swartz; The Internet’s Own Boy: His Legacy Touches Us All, What Is Open Access Anyway?, Open Access And The New Education Paradigm, Intel Specialist Launches Open Source Revolution, Tuition Free Online Education, Zooniverse, Teenager Discovers Early Cancer Screening Test) about open access already and we promise to keep bringing you all the RealGoodNews in the open access arena.

The latest, as stated, is MIT, Harvard, and Yale moving into open access. You can now have access to many of the Universities’ course materials for free online! This is huge! For the self study student, citizen scientist, researcher, or prodigy, this is a barrel of gems!

At MIT,courses range from Aeronautics and Astronautics to Writing. Courses for Engineering, Biology, Chemistry, and Planetary Sciences are all available online, for free – I just can’t say that enough, it feels so good – online, for free. MIT. Free….online.

Take a tour of the available MIT courses here.

Yale offers a fairly large number of Open Access courses as well; from Astronomy to Biochemistry, to Economics and Political Sciences, it’s all there. Check out Yale’s list of courses here.

Although they offer only a few open courses at the moment, at least Harvard offers some courses already and I am sure there will be more in the future. Here is what they have now.

Carnegie Mellon takes an even more innovative approach announcing “The Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach.” Their courses are listed here.

There are also Universities that are strictly Open Universities in their entirety such as Open Learn at Open.edu, and the Open University at Open.ac.uk.

There are other colleges and Universities giving in to Open Access as well, and there are also organizations that are organizing information on where to get online education such as the Distant Learning Portal, and Open Culture, who advertises “1000 Free Online Courses From Top Universities”.

Remember there are other resources for you as well such as Open Library, and public.resource.org where you can obtain open government and law resources.

The Open Access Revolution is in full swing, as predicted by many, and it is going well. As the Open Source/ Open Access Revolution continues we will see many new and exciting innovations emerge and it is apparent that these developments are a certain catalyst for the increasing educational opportunities of the future.

As the educational opportunities begin to reach more and more people, and they are allowed to study and learn, the full scope of mans potential will begin to manifest right before us all; and all of this is indeed, RealGoodNews.

http://realgoodnews.com/global/get-your-mit-harvard-or-yale-education-free-at-home/