Thaindian News

Washington, April 15 (IANS) America’s Ivy League Yale University has added ten “compelling” new “Open Yale Courses”, the university’s open educational initiative available for free on the internet and attracting a great many visitors from India.

Apart from the US, the greatest number of visitors to Open Yale Courses comes from China, the UK, Canada, South Korea, Germany, Brazil, India, and Australia.

The new courses range from financial theory to Cervantes’ Don Quixote to environmental politics and law, the New Haven, Connecticut based university announced Thursday.

Each course, recorded in its entirety as it was presented to Yale College students, is taught by one of the University’s most distinguished faculty members. Open Yale Courses may be accessed at http://oyc.yale.edu.
The courses are available in high definition video and audio formats and they offer the full experience of the Yale classroom.

Closed captioning is provided for each course, as well as searchable transcripts, syllabi, reading assignments, problem sets and other materials.

Interested individuals may download the video and/or audio files of Open Yale Courses and watch and listen to them at their convenience.

There are also iPhone and iPad optimised versions of the website to allow access to the lectures for those on the go.
No registration is required for these courses, and participants do not earn academic credit from Yale nor do they interact with the professors.

Open Yale Courses is one of the most frequently visited Yale websites. It has received over 3 million unique visits since its debut in December 2007 and has delivered 26 million page views since April 1, 2009 (when Google Analytics was put on the site).

In an effort to increase accessibility and to allow faster downloading of the materials, Open Yale Courses media content is also available at Yale’s YouTube and Apple iTunes U channels.

Open Yale Courses content can be viewed through these platforms by visiting http://www.youtube.com/yalecourses and http://itunes.yale.edu/ and has been accessed approximately 15 million times through these channels alone.

“We are delighted that so many people around the world have accessed our Open Yale Courses,” said Yale President Richard C. Levin.

“In the new courses we are releasing today, we are taking full advantage of the latest technology to bring the learning of our distinguished faculty to students of all ages and interests.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)