<p>I'm a homeschooled student who self-studies nearly all the time, and so I was considering using this. I'm especially trying to improve my knowledge of history, social sciences, Chinese, and English (writing essays, etc.)</p>
<p>What OCW courses would you recommend (preferably ones that don't require me to buy any extra books or anything?)</p>
<p>Ty :).</p>
<p>Bump. 10char</p>
<p>I think we don’t really understand your question.</p>
<p>Open courseware, by definition, is “open.” Thus, anyone can go online and look at course materials (notes, problem sets, and exams) for a given class at MIT. Some classes may assign problems out of a textbook, but you don’t need to buy anything in most cases. And since all the courses are “open,” then you are perfectly able to go online and find out for yourself what kind of courses interest you? I don’t really understand what kind of “advice” you are looking for. @@"</p>
<p>For History classes, look under 21H. “Social science” is too broad. For Chinese classes, look under 21F.1xx. For English classes, look under 21L or 21W (writing).</p>
<p>ps. Do you know where open courseware is? ocw.mit.edu…just a thought in case you don’t really know where it is.</p>
<p>You can also find a lot of courses on youtube; it’s more accessible. You can look for the account “mit” that hosts a lot of lectures of physics, biology, chemistry etc… I’m not sure about the social sciences though.</p>
<p>you might want to look into the webcast.berkeley (some great courses from UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>The OP wants to know WHICH humanities courses on ocw have as much of their material online as possible. When Ty says “required” he means that the book was available at the Coop for the original class that the OCW is based off of. The students who took that class at MIT were supposed to buy said book. Depending on the class, the OCW material may be useless without the original textbook, but some classes really never use the required books, and some don’t have books at all. The OP is looking for these classes.</p>
<p>Textbooks are expensive, and some people (gasp) have slow internet or (gasp) dialup, so it’s actually a significant amount of work and time to download a bunch of large PDFs to figure out how feasible it would be to learn something from the class without having to buy the book it recommends or how comprehensive the course notes are. It does vary you know. </p>
<p>Basically, if someone here has taken 21.XXX, it didn’t have a textbook or didn’t depend on it, s/he liked it and noticed that everything is on OCW if you checked it, the OP would appreciate it if s/he would name that class.</p>
<p>For the courses that I have taken here and looked at the OCW websites, I’ve found that professors will list many textbooks, often because they use no book because none fits, but not teach out of any of the books they least either. (very much a grad class thing, I think).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I haven’t taken any humanities classes- I’m a grad student in Course 12. I can tell you that 8.901 (Astrophysics I) has extensive powerpoints (we got printouts in class, and I wrote little on top of them), 12.501 (Geophysics) has booklike notes as well, but only on certain topics, and 12.540, while nearly textbookless and fully covered with powerpoints, most of the real material came out of the prof’s mouth.</p>
<p>^Yes, that’s pretty much what I meant. Thanks :).</p>
<p>P.S. Ty stood for “thank you”. My bad, I should’ve written out the whole two words.</p>
<p>Even though this isn’t a humanities class, I highly suggest you go watch the videos for 18.02. Professor Auroux is just that awesome.</p>
<p>IMO, the absolute best introductory lectures to physics on the Internet are Walter Lewin’s lectures for 8.01, 8.02, and 8.03. The demos are awesome, he is extremely clear, precise and methodical.</p>
<p>However, there’s not way you’re gonna study physics without “extra books”. It’s worth the money to invest into a few good books (with lots of problems) so you can test your skills.</p>
<p>Here is a free online website that has the best collection of physics problems at a introductory level and answers.</p>
<p>[Fisika</a> - I. E. IRODOV Problems in General Physics](<a href=“http://www.scribd.com/doc/4995623/Fisika-I-E-IRODOV-Problems-in-General-Physics]Fisika”>http://www.scribd.com/doc/4995623/Fisika-I-E-IRODOV-Problems-in-General-Physics)</p>
<p>18.06 lectures with gil strang. we used strang’s book at my school but my prof was **** and those lectures were a godsend.</p>