World Science U Awaits YOU!
Science is cool. And now so is how you can learn more about it! Right as we get the return of Cosmos (and our podcast about it, Notes from the Cosmic Shore… check it out!) we get WORLD SCIENCE U. This is a FREE online learning experience from some of the world’s best scientists and thinkers. The initial offerings are taught by Brian Greene, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University. Additional instructors and courses will be announced in the coming months. But you can sign up now! World Science U is designed to be a uniquely immersive educational experience for everyone, from the merely curious, to high school and university students, to life-long learners. You can earn Certificates of Completion for University Courses (sorry, doesn’t count as college credit) and — and this is a great feature — you can take your time and complete any course on your own schedule!
“Science is the future, but science is also a difficult subject,” Greene said. “That makes it in my mind an ideal subject to be presented in a new way in which abstract ideas are made visual and intuitive through interactive explorations.”
By making the material available in multiple formats, Greene said he hopes to attract people of all kinds of backgrounds to World Science U.
“On the one hand, a teacher in a classroom can use these materials as a kind of digital textbook, if you will, where they can have students go through the standard material that they would have assigned, but now the experience is much richer. … It’s a textbook come to life,” he said. “The other way that I envision it being used is for the person who doesn’t have access to a university classroom, who isn’t enrolled in a college or university for whatever reason. … They will be able to jump into fascinating material on their own with someone who is taking them by the hand the whole way through.”
World Science U is divided into three main sections:
SCIENCE UNPLUGGED provides hundreds of short video answers to a wide range of questions from “What is a Higgs Particle?” to “What happens to time near a black hole?”
SHORT COURSES, aimed at a broad spectrum of lifelong learners, typically require two or three weeks to complete, and have no homework or exams. They provide non-technical explorations, which go beyond traditional science popularizations. Short Course Available NOW: Space, Time and Einstein – Coming Soon: Warps & Curves, Invisible Reality.
UNIVERSITY COURSES are university-level offerings that typically require eight to ten weeks to complete. Students work at their own pace, and will earn World Science U certification upon successful course completion. University Course Available NOW: Special Relativity- Coming Soon: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics.
Free is good, and learning is good… so this is a win-win! I’ve signed up… will you?
