Universities Team With Online Course Provider
Source: New York Times
Coursera, the California company that offers free college classes online, is forming partnerships with 10 large public university systems and public flagship universities to create courses that students can take for credit, either fully online or with classroom sessions.
The move could open online classes to 1.25 million students at public institutions across the United States, and could help increase graduation rates by making introductory and required classes — often a bottleneck because of high demand — more widely available.
Joining Coursera will be the State University of New York system, the Tennessee Board of Regents and the University of Tennessee systems, the University of Colorado system, the University of Houston system, the University of Kentucky, the University of Nebraska, the University of New Mexico, the University System of Georgia and West Virginia University.
Some systems plan to blend online materials with faculty-led classroom sessions. Others will offer credit to students who take the courses online followed by a proctored exam on campus.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/education/universities-team-with-online-course-provider.html
An example of coursera lecture about Dijkstra's algorithm from an AP story about Coursera:
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One was a master's level class in strategic innovations in organizations taught by a well-known Vanderbilt U. professor and professional engineer. The other one is a law class taught by a Emory U. professor on the history of nationality and citizenship laws in the U.S.
I was also taking an introductory class on learning to play the guitar from Berklee College of Music, but had to drop it (not enough time).
I was a 'professional' student at the college level for 10 years of my life at brick-and-mortar institutions, one of which cost an arm and a leg (and now costs two arms and three legs) - our basketball coach is expensive 
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Comparatively speaking, I got more out of the Coursera classes I've taken than many of my freshman and sophomore year prerequisite classes which were no picnic as I was then an engineering and biochemistry double major (advanced levels of calculus, differential equations, statics, thermodynamics, etc.), when I was in a huge theater-like classroom with 200 of my closest classmates and some poor graduate student teaching assistant.
On occasion, the TA would not be exactly fluent in English - as luck would have it, I tended to have these TAs in some of the more difficult classes, which made translating what the TA was saying half the fun.
Anyway, Coursera has some excellent universities that already provide some great courses. They have started a fee-based 'signature' option if you want an employer to actually verify that you did take a class.
I also like the fact that there are students from all over the world, that I can view the lectures and take the quizzes in my little spare time and that I can participate in discussions with the other students, in ways that I would not be able to do if I had to go to campus and manage my very busy full time job (DU notwithstanding 
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Don't knock Coursera till you try it. I personally find it a very useful tool for lifelong learning or to brush up on stuff I learned a long time ago, or even to learn something new.
Education should be free and freely available. Coursera will not replace a campus or the campus experience or even the one-on-one interaction with a professor and classmates, but it certainly levels the playing field for those who can't afford higher education.
