Welcome to ALISON – a three million-strong, global online learning community, filled with free, high-quality resources to help you develop essential, certified workplace skills.
ALISON was founded in 2007 by global leader and innovator Mike Feerick. Read his full bio here.
Our mission at ALISON is simple: to enable you, wherever you are in the world, to learn and get certified – at your own pace – using our free, interactive, multimedia.
ALISON is for anyone taking their first step to a new job, and for everyone taking their next step to a better job. ALISON is as individual as you are.
Our materials will help you to develop your creativity, confidence and competence for work, and to be as contented and productive as you can be in the world of work.
Every course is standards-based and certified. That means bragging rights with family and friends, an edge in your first job or new job, and inspiration to be all you can be.
Academic Earth was launched on the premise that everyone deserves
access to a world-class education. In 2009, we built the first collection of
free online college courses from the world’s top universities. The world of
open education has exploded since then, so today our curated lists of online
courses are hand selected by our staff to show you the very best offerings by
subject area. We also make sure there is something for everyone: whether you
want to explore a new topic or advance in your current field, we bring the
amazing world of academia to you for free.
Academic Earth believes that everyone has the right to a world-class education. Recognizing the existing barriers in academia, we continue our efforts to curate an unparalleled collection of free online courses from the world’s top universities. Moving forward, we honor the egalitarian spirit of Academic Earth’s founders as we develop a platform to facilitate the global sharing of ideas, both inside and outside the classroom.
In addition to our comprehensive collection of free online college courses, Academic Earth features an ongoing series of original videos. These videos tap into our belief that a great deal of learning happens outside the classroom in those unstructured moments when provocative questions are raised, debated, and sometimes answered. We embrace intellectual curiosity and encourage the Academic Earth community to share our videos to launch their own discussions. After all, only through questioning the world around us, can we come to better understand it.
HISTORY
In 2008, Richard Ludlow, Chris Bruner, and Liam Pisano, founded Academic Earth with the mission of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education. Backed by an angel investor group, including four Yale professors, Honest Tea founder Barry Nalebuff, and Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin, Academic Earth stood instrumental in the online learning revolution.
Recognizing the critical role of the Internet in supporting their mission, the founders set out to develop an interactive web-based platform for users to actively engage with free online education resources from the world’s top universities. The site continues to evolve in response to rapidly changing educational technology.
In 2012, Academic Earth was acquired by CMN.com, a leader in consumer driven-content strategy with a strong online presence in higher education. Under the new ownership, Academic Earth gains the expertise and resources invaluable to refining its learning platform while better connecting users with premier, web-based educational content.
Academic Earth holds true to its original mission of giving everyone access to a world-class education.
Academic Earth is headquartered in Houston, TX.
MEET OUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, STEPHANIE SNIDER
A bona fide information junkie, Stephanie knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little, but will never claim to know it all…not usually. After all, her mom taught her, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” (Thanks, Socrates) To this day, from politics to pop culture, she loves asking questions and looking for answers.
Stephanie’s passion for learning took her on a winding path that eventually led to Academic Earth. In 2000, she graduated from the University of Washington. With English degree in hand, she stepped into the insurance and investment world. Knowing her heart would never belong to Wall Street, she returned to the UW, earning a Masters in Architecture in 2009. But, with the ink still wet on her diploma, she found herself at the mercy of the financial crisis.
Again, her mom’s sage words came to mind, “The difference between a crisis and an adventure is all in your attitude.” She chose adventure. Skip ahead two years. Stephanie worked in design, became a mom, and started a small business. Today, she brings her tenacity and love of learning to Academic Earth, and is thrilled to help usher this online community into the future.
In her “free time,” she and her husband chase after their toddler, who proves that perpetual motion is possible. And, on any given weekend, they can be found wandering the aisles of record stores, introducing their little one to the finer points of vintage vinyl. Connect with Stephanie on Google Plus.
Open Education Database is the most comprehensive collection of online college rankings and free courses anywhere online. We welcome learners of all levels to explore their interests and prepare for exciting new careers, build on existing foundations of education and experience, or just satisfy a craving to learn something completely new.
We’ve been a leader in the open education movement since 2007 when we were the first organization to release online college rankings and over the last six years have built on that tradition of helping learners connect with the best-fit education opportunities. OEDb continues to release its online college rankings each January and is now proud to feature a collection of over 10,000 free open courses and interactive resources from top universities around the world. Help us advance open education by joining our community.
Ellyssa Kroski – iLibrarian Blog
Ellyssa Kroski is the Director of Information Technology at the New York Law Institute as well as an award-winning editor and author of 22 books, includingLaw Librarianship in the Digital Age for which she won the AALL’s 2014 Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award. Her ten-book technology series, The Tech Set, won the ALA’s Best Book in Library Literature Award in 2011. She is a librarian, an adjunct faculty member at Pratt Institute, and an international conference speaker. She speaks at several conferences a year, mainly about new tech trends, digital strategy, and libraries.
Advice
Our Advice section is a resource hub for visitors looking for a guide to online learning. Here we break down need-to-know issues like accreditation, choosing the right school and transferring credits.
Open Courseware
Our open courseware collection is at the heart of OEDb’s mission and user experience. We guide you through thousands of free audio and visual lectures, full courses and multimedia across all subjects. Here’s just a sample:
A survey of Shakespeare’s plays from Brandeis University
An introduction to InDesign for those wanting to add to their software and design skills, from Birmingham City University
A lecture series on marketing mastery from Udemy
AP science courses from the University of California College Prep initiative
Timeline
October 2006: OEDb “opens” as a platform to connect learners to the emerging dialogue of online education and offers a smaller version of our current degree index.
January 2007: We released the first edition of our now annual online college rankings, setting a standard for reviewing and celebrating pioneering colleges and universities.
January 2009: Our third rankings are officially recognized by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus. We’ve officially made it!
September 2009: iLibrarian’s Ellyssa Kroski begins a regular column with Library Journal
March 2011: Ellyssa Kroski’s 10-part series on technology and libraries “The Tech Set” wins the 2011 Greenwood Publishing Group Award for the Best Book in Library Literature.
March 2013: OEDb releases its robust collection of over 10,000 free, open education resources. It’s impossible to pick a favorite!
“The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone.”
Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering
Unlocking Knowledge
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Through OCW, educators improve courses and curricula, making their schools more effective; students find additional resources to help them succeed; and independent learners enrich their lives and use the content to tackle some of our world’s most difficult challenges, including sustainable development, climate change, and cancer eradication.
In 1999, MIT Faculty considered how to use the Internet in pursuit of MIT's mission—to advance knowledge and educate students—and in 2000 proposed OCW. MIT published the first proof-of-concept site in 2002, containing 50 courses. By November 2007, MIT completed the initial publication of virtually the entire curriculum, over 1,800 courses in 33 academic disciplines. Going forward, the OCW team is updating existing courses and adding new content and services to the site.
We're empowering learning in the classroom and around the globe
At edX, we believe in the highest quality education, both online and in the classroom.
EdX was created for students and institutions that seek to transform themselves through cutting-edge technologies, innovative pedagogy, and rigorous courses.
Through our institutional partners, the xConsortium, along with other leading global members, we present the best of higher education online, offering opportunity to anyone who wants to achieve, thrive, and grow.
Our goals, however, go beyond offering courses and content. We are committed to research that will allow us to understand how students learn, how technology can transform learning, and the ways teachers teach on campus and beyond.
As innovators and experimenters, we want to share what we discover. The edX platform is available as open source. By conducting and publishing significant research on how students learn, we will empower and inspire educators around the world and promote success in learning.
Our aim is to become a leading resource for learners and learning worldwide by staying focused on the goals and principles set forth when forming edX:
Our goals
Expand access to education for everyone
Enhance teaching and learning on campus and online
Advance teaching and learning through research
Our principles
Nonprofit
Open source platform
Collaborative
Financially sustainable
EdX is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is governed by MIT and Harvard.
Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Some of our major resource collections include:
Do The Courses Featured Here Give University Credit?
First and foremost, the MOOCs/Online courses appearing on this page sometimes offer students “statements of accomplishment” or “certificates of completion” if they successfully complete a given course. However, most traditional universities won’t give students credit for taking theses online courses, and students typically can’t use these courses as a way to satisfy requirements for a degree. It’s conceivable that some schools will give credit for these classes, but you would really need to check with the registar’s office at your institution.
Second, we should point out (in case it’s not clear) that Open Culture is not the builder/creator of these courses. Our site simply highlights MOOCs/Online Courses created by other educational ventures. You can get more information by reading our MOOC FAQ.
Can I Recommend Materials to List on Open Culture?
Yes. If you would like us to add links to relevant parts of our site, you can suggest materials/links via email and we will be happy to review them. Please read over our editorial guidelines and then let us know where you think your material should be listed, and try to provide all of the information that will help us list your material. For example, if you want us to include a link in one of our podcast directories, please look at the appropriate directory and include all of the information that we typically include in our entries.
Who is Behind Open Culture?
Dan Colman, the lead editor, is the Director & Associate Dean ofStanford’s Continuing Studies Program. Before that, he served as the Managing Director of AllLearn, an e-learning consortium owned by Stanford, Oxford and Yale, and as the Director of Business Development and Editorial Manager at About.com. He received his PhD and MA from Stanford, and his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The common thread running through his career is his interest in bringing relevant, perspective-changing information to large audiences, often with the help of the internet. Get his full bio here. You can reach Dan at mail@openculture.com.
Josh Jones received his PhD in English at Fordham University and is a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Mike Springer, a journalist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes daily for Open Culture.
Ayun Halliday is a writer and actor. She is best known as the author and illustrator of the long-running zine The East Village Inky.
Eric Oberle provides very generous technical support for the site. Without him, you would be getting 404s instead of regular doses of intelligent media.
Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
Kate Rix writes about k-12 instruction and higher education on a regular basis. Visit more of her work here.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow.
Is the Site Affiliated with Stanford University?
This site is not associated with Stanford. The ideas/views expressed here belong to Dan, or others. But, in all cases, they are private ones.
How Can I Contact Open Culture?
Feel free to drop us a line at mail@openculture.com.
Can I Advertise on Open Culture?
Yes. You can immediately place ads on Open Culture by using Google’s Adwords platform. This will give you the ability to target the whole site or specific pages. Find directions on how to target our site here.
