Despite the proliferation of online education platforms, such as edX or Coursera, some of us are still very much in love with the usual style of lectures, where the lecturer stands to explain in front of a group of students in a classroom, and the camera records This material is then shown on a platform, usually YouTube, for free.
The platforms dedicated to e-learning have evolved so much that they have created a new type of education that can only be obtained electronically, but it still faces several problems, the most important of which was its attempts to win the Internet's audience, which is hasty in nature, which prompted it with time to shorten its courses. , are cognitive corks that are offered in about an hour or two per course, compared to university courses of more than 20-30 hours, which are significantly more heavier.
Because this last type does not receive much attention among students and those wishing to learn on their own, we decided in "
Meydan
" to shed some light on it, especially since we are primarily interested in a degree of depth in presenting knowledge stories.
There are already a group of great platforms in this range, and we will mainly focus on one of the most important sources of video lectures, which is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States of America, one of the most prestigious institutes in the whole world, but we will not lose sight of two other nominations as long as they benefit students around the world.
The story of the MIT OpenCourseWare program is the same as the story of open education via the Internet, which is considered a revolution that broke out a decade ago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the most important stage, followed by Salman Khan's leap for younger students in the "Khan Academy", which is considered Now one of the most important resources for students around the world for free learning.
It started in 1999, an idea worked by the dean of the institute at the time, Dr. Robert Brown, and the first courses were presented on the platform in 2002, and the problem was always related to property rights that were required to be abandoned by a large number of professors and students as well, one of them may refuse to appear in a video on the Internet , and this may stop the whole process, in addition to that, the slides that are presented to students, homework and exams as well as book nominations, require the same processes, and therefore you must communicate with their owners, so sometimes you may find that the camera may refrain from displaying the slide on the board, Because property rights prevent it, but that's rare.
The matter developed very quickly, to the extent that only in 2005 the platform offered its 900th course, but most of these courses were incomplete, meaning that some courses do not provide full lectures, others only provide meals and school materials that students must remember, currently. The platform offers about 2,500 courses, but only about 150 of them are fully presented as if you were a student at the institute, where you receive lectures in video format, as well as assignments, exams, references nominations and PDF copies, which were presented to students at the moment of submitting the course.
After that, the platform developed itself in two great domains that we hope will continue to expand in the future, which are the Massachusetts Institute of High School Students Program, you can find a link here, and the Massachusetts Institute of Self-Learning Program, you can find a link here, both of which are re-indexing of the content of the platform with various very useful additions It is essential for all those who love to learn online to access these two programs regularly.
The first program offers courses for high school students, but with advanced university additions, which is a really very important opportunity for students of this stage from Arab countries, because its materials are very rare in Arabic content, and the second program was made specifically for those who want to learn on their own without outside help, and therefore the institute has added additions Very important - in 15 different subjects - to actually help the student with that, from picture lectures to homework.
Because the list of the institute’s lectures is long, you can enter its page from here, and then filter the results to choose the “Complete Video Lectures” list. Also, do not forget to go through the list of the most popular courses on the platform’s website, which you can find here, Because they are usually the most important already, as well as the list of recently released courses, you can find it here.
Well, now let's talk about some very distinctive features of the MIT platform of open learning, and it can be said that for students of physics and mathematics, we are in front of a very rich real treasure, we start with the trilogy of Walter Lewin, professor of physics at the institute, and the world-renowned among students, all for the academic years First university, the first course is in mechanics, the second is in electricity and magnetism, and the third course explains waves and vibrations, which are very important and sober introductions, in more than 90 lectures, for physics lovers, in addition to that, those lectures are translated into Arabic, not on a platform. MIT", but through "Our Arab Shams" Foundation, you can find the three courses here (mechanics), here (electricity and magnets) and here (vibrations and waves).
On the other hand, we must not forget that quantum physics courses via the platform are among the most important goals of lovers of this very complex field, and are presented by Dr. Barton Zubach in three chapters, each of about 25 lectures, and requires - to enter it - a previous introduction to physics, but the most important of which is to be Studying the course of vibrations and waves that we talked about a while ago, this is a very interesting, very important and sober comprehensive introduction to quantum mechanics, if you pass it with a degree of concentration, you will have come a huge way with it as a beginner student. Here you will find the first course, here the second course, and here the third course.
Of course, we cannot leave this area except with a reference to four very important courses, three of which are in calculus and are essential for all math lovers, that take you from simplicity to professionalism, this group can polish your professionalism in calculus to high levels, which is "Single Variable" Calculus", "Multi-variable Calculus" and "Deferential equations", and you can also find them translated via the "Our Arab Sun" platform, link from here, in more than a hundred lectures! Which helps you to easily cross the language barrier. The fourth is in linear algebra, which is a very important area for the future progress in physics, which requires that you have completed the triad of calculus, you can find it here.
Now let's leave physics and mathematics for a bit, and perhaps if we decided to continue with this section, we would have completed a small book that tells about the fat masterpieces of the Massachusetts Institute, but other areas are also worth a look at, and in the economics department you can find dozens of interesting courses, of which so far 5 are complete. We recommend to you a very important and wonderful course entitled "The Challenge of World Poverty" presented by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Nobel laureates in economics 2019, which is the material they summarized in their famous book "The Economy of the Poor", in which they tell about their ideas that revealed - Experimentally - about the different nature of the behavior of the poor, which helped in dealing with them, the course from here.
As for John Gabriel, he offers one of the most interesting courses offered to psychology. The advantage of this course is that it pushes you - during 24 lectures - deeper into this scope, answering questions such as: How does the mind work? How does the brain support the mind? It also moves to understand the mental and neural bases of perception, emotion, learning, memory, personality, psychopathology, and social interaction. The course is one of the essential necessities for anyone who wants to learn about psychology on their own, and it can be said that in addition to the course of Paul Bloom from Yale University - and we will talk about it shortly - Kenzan are great. Gabriel's course from here, and Bloom's course from here.
In addition, the Institute recently participated in raising awareness, at a deep level, of the “Covid-19” pandemic, through a course of 14 lectures, each of which lasts about an hour, on various important topics, such as the minutes of immunity, how to make vaccines, the nature of the epidemic and its spread, and the nature of the disease. He himself and what he does in the body, and potential treatments, as well as an introduction to virology, strong personalities such as Dr. Antonio Fauti participate in the course, and you can read his full article here.
Lovers of computing sciences will undoubtedly enjoy the most popular courses offered by the platform. In fact, the institute offers the largest number of complete courses in the field of computing, and many of them are in the list of the most popular courses through the open learning platform. We chose two courses for beginners, representing two semesters in the world Computing with a very little previous introduction or even without any introductions, the first course, you can find it here, is "Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python", and the second course is "Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science", you can find it here, and they aim to provide students Beginners from scratch have a thorough understanding of the role of computing in problem solving, and teach them to write small programs.
Even movie lovers will find great courses on the Massachusetts Institute of Open Education (MIT) platform, and despite the small number of courses, they are interesting, we chose for you the "The Film Experience" course, presented by Dr. David Thorburn in 26 long lectures, the course focuses on careful analysis and criticism of a wide range of Films, from silent films to classic Hollywood films, musicals and action films, to European and Japanese cinema. In this course, students develop skills in the deep analysis of cinema. Find the course here.
All this and we have not yet talked about the basic introductions to chemistry and biology that MIT offers, you find them in detail in the scopes of the self-learning program and the high school program, but for now let's leave all that aside and consider two other very important sources, which we will refer to very quickly, until our material on The most important platforms that offer rich and long courses that delve into you in various fields of knowledge.
Let's start with Yale University, which offers 40 completely free courses to students around the world, some of which are very popular, such as Paul Bloom's course that we talked about a while ago, as well as Ben Pollack's wonderful course on game theory, as well as the course Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory by Evan Cellini, Dr. Tamar Gendler also offers a fun cross-sectional course on the science and philosophy of human nature, Dr. Stephen Smith also offers political philosophy in a great course, and Yale's most important production for science students is Ramamurti Shankar's two-semester physics course. Find all of the Yale collection here.
As for Stanford University, it is also one of the first platforms to make its courses available free of charge through its YouTube channel, especially physics lectures given by the brawling physics boy Dr. Leonard Susskind, and you can find them separately here under the name “Theoretical Minimum”, as well as lectures "Human Behavioral Biology" by Robert Sapolsky, you can find it here, and here you can find the lists of all the courses offered by the university for free.
Of course, there are many universities that offer this kind of fatty courses, but we chose the best and most popular.
As you can see, they are all important courses and require a very great effort in their pursuit compared to what is offered by the e-learning platforms currently available.
In the end, you have to be serious about your desires to learn. Everything is available, books, courses and interaction with physics lovers from all over the world, but it remains only to respect what you love, if you love physics for example, or political philosophy, cinema, economics or others, do not treat it as "something I love" As if it is a side quest that you can - or cannot - take on, but always be serious about what you love and go on with it non-stop.