Attend Yale in Your Underwear - with Open Courseware

by Clay Burell · 2009-05-26 14:17:00 UTC
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Yale Jewish Bible class

A refreshing take on Bible study.

I'm halfway through the first of 24 lectures from Yale's Religious Studies: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) course from 2006. Click on that link and you can download all the lectures as videos, plus transcripts of them, and course reading assignments (unfortunately, the readings themselves aren't included, so you're stuck with either buying the texts yourself, or playing the classic college student game of skipping the reading altogether and relying wholly on the lectures to understand the content).

It beats the hell out of American Idol.

She's a good lecturer, though I'm tempted to quibble with some of her characterizations of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian culture and religion already. But I'll wait until she gets into it more deeply in future lectures.

Religious Studies not your bag? The world of Open Courseware surely can fill it with something to your tastes. Check out Open Yale's full online (and again, free) course offerings to see for yourself.

It doesn't end with Yale, of course. I'm also following UC Berkeley's Modern European History course. Check here for all of Berkeley's courses that offer video lectures in all their departments.

Finally, there's iTunes University. You can download podcasts on many subjects there as well. (And read this little piece of research showing students learned better watching lectures on their iPods than they did sitting in the lecture hall.)

Search Google for "Open Courseware" for more.

High school, maybe even middle school, teachers should consider showing some Yale lectures to their students. The level of language and concepts seems entirely appropriate for teens, at least in the introductory courses. It might demystify the realities of college for these students, and lower their anxieties about what college demands. And you can certainly do worse than a Yale professor for a "guest lecturer" in your classrooms.

Clay Burell
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