Some academic resources are really practical

Having graduated almost a decade ago (though, believe me, it doesn't feel that long!), I have developed a healthy scepticism for the applicability of what one learns at university. That said, I am amazed at how seldom academic resources are used in professional training and career development programmes - it seems to me to be a wasted opportunity.

Ever since MIT opened up its course-materials to the general public a few years back, the number of schools offering high quality learning resources for free online has exploded. Predictably enough, this started with the business schools, but it now covers pretty much all disciplines.

And it really isn't just about collections of course notes poorly transcribed into powerpoint (although there is plenty of that too!). There are podcasts, video lectures, reading lists and even some interactive elements.

Now of course this doesn't necessarily compete with the best of the subscription based learning sites (either distance learning universities, or private organisations like SkillSoft), but then again, it is free!

Below I have put together a selection of some of my favourite academic sites:

• MIT - one of the frontrunners, MIT offer mostly written material, but also some multimedia courses across all disciplines.
• LSE - this a specialist podcast feed from the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the Department of Management. As you would expect the LSE faculty always have some interesting things to say.
• Open University's openlearn - pretty much every discipline, mostly written course notes, but really well presented.
  
• Berkeley - all kinds of disciplines and lots of videocasts and podcasts - I am particularly enjoying the first year undergraduate podcasts on "European civilisation from the Renaissance to the present"; you can just imagine the classroom from any number of movie representations of US top colleges!
  
• INSEAD - the knowledgecasts are informal interviews with the professors and industry leaders and at 10-15 minutes a piece are easy to digest!
  

Hope this is interesting for somebody out there. In a later post, I plan on revisiting this topic from a more professional perspective - the keywords being software engineering and YouTube ;-).