Raymond Verhelst & Associates
Global Business Development & Marketing Consultancy
Chalmers University of Technology to offer FREE online Graphene Science Courses Starting in 2015
MIT and Harvard started it and the world has caught on. EdX is a non-profit online educational platform that delivers the higher education through innovative online technology which is offered completely free.
Starting in 2015 Chalmers University of Technology from Sweden will be joining the edX platform and delivering global education through ChalmersX where it will deliver its MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) free of charge. The first ChalmersX MOOC will be an introduction to the "super-material" graphene: Introduction to Graphene Science and Technology. The subject is at the forefront of research, and EU's biggest research initiative ever – Graphene Flagship – is based at Chalmers.
The course will be led by Jie Sun, who heads up the graphene research at Chalmers. “I hope to give the participants of the course basic knowledge of graphene. At the end of the course, an engineer should be able to determine if graphene is suitable for the company's products, and a student should be able to decide if the subject is of interest for continued studies”, says Sun.
The free course will start in May and rather than consist of the traditional 45-minute lectures, the teachers have determined that the moocs are better suited with 5-7 minute video recordings. Their analysis shows that these video chapters allow the virtual student to drill down and concentrate on specifics.
About edX
The xConsortium is made up of leading educational institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Berkley, Boston University, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, McGill and dozens of other leading schools from around the world.
The group presents a collective of more than 300 courses, taught by more than 400 faculty and teaching staffers, and to date more than 100,000 students have earned edX certificates.
As stated, this is free and registration takes only a few minutes. Once registered, you spend your time browsing through the available courses by topic and evaluating the courseware and prerequisites. Once you sign up, be prepared for a rigorous curriculum. You should also be aware that your class may consist of thousands (even tens of thousands) of other students from around the globe. The online platform is very interactive and allows almost instant feedback in terms of questions and the available streaming videos and forums allow you to communicate with the teaching staff as well as other students. Courses are typical semester length and can be accessed on your terms and schedule.
For more information visit www.edx.org