Stanford University introduced several free online course starting in late 2011. There are about 10 of them, mostly in the field of computer science. The course are basically a series of pre-recorded videos, each about 10 min long. All free. You don't need to buy text books etc. You basically just watch the videos, do homework that is asked. These are for self-learning and for general public. They are not related to social approval and sanction. i.e. it does not give you university credit for certificate.
I've looked the intro video of each. Here's the courses and my impression.
This is the most basic one, for those of you who have no idea what computer programing is. (if you are a reader of my programing blog, then you are already quite beyond it)
Cheerful teacher. Seems a good class if you never coded before.
“Computer Science 101” By Nick Parlante. @ www.cs101-class.org
“Human-Computer Interaction” By Scott Klemmer. @ www.hci-class.org
The teacher seems a bit boring. Note that human interface design is a fishy subject. Not quite sure what exactly this course teaches, but if you are a long time programer (such as on linux) and have no idea about what's good UI design (yet you probably think you know a lot), you might check this course out.
“Machine Learning” By Andrew Ng. @ jan2012.ml-class.org
Good. Wikipedia Machine learning
The teachers seem mechanical and boring. One of the guy is wussy, but he wrote a popular book, so i think it's competent class.
The book he wrote is: Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing (1999) By Christopher D Manning, Hinrich Schuetze. amazon
“Natural Language Processing” By Dan Jurafsky, Christopher Manning. @ www.nlp-class.org
Wikipedia Natural language processing
This is more of a math class.
I like this one. I like the teacher. Both of them. Very confident and engaging.
“Game Theory” By Matthew O Jackson, Yoav Shoham. @ www.game-theory-class.org
Wikipedia Game theory
“Probabilistic Graphical Models” By Daphne Koller. @ www.pgm-class.org
Wikipedia Graphical model
“Cryptography” by Dan Boneh. @ www.crypto-class.org
Wikipedia cryptography
“The Lean Launchpad” by Steve Blank. @ www.launchpad-class.org
“Technology Entrepreneurship” Chuck Eesley. @ www.venture-class.org
This is Pseudo-Science Fad Garbage.
“Software as a Service”, by Armando Fox, David Patterson. @ www.saas-class.org
Why is this course garbage? See: