Having defended private universities and the concept of paying tuition, I will also admit that I do enjoy those learning opportunities that are available for free as well. I have long meant to complete an entire course's worth of work as described on MIT's Open Course Ware website. Unfortunately, I am not so great about consistent follow through. So that is what I am going to tackle this year for NaBloPoMo.

The main problem I have with completing the OCW stuff is also what I saw as the main benefit of college - peers. I need some back and forth, someone with whom to converse, when I am in a class. Sitting by myself and reading is all well and good, but peers keep me on track. Plus it adds a ton of value to what I read. Discussing the readings for a class makes me think about them in more depth, consider angles I hadn't even thought of, and engage more with the material. (None of which is to diminish the value of professors - I had some of the best profs ever in college - men and women who were willing to go way over their published office hours and gave their students all of their attention. Including a professor who had a Nobel prize in physics. Well, I was in his class the year before he actually got the award. But still - he was the most enthusiastic freshman physics teachers I had out of the three courses I took.)

Which all boils down to: I'll be using NaBloPoMo to semi-go through the material for an STS class listed on the OCW site. I'm doing a class that wouldn't be my first choice simply because the first time I tried this I had a small group of online friends who all claimed they were going to read along with me. Real life intruded so that part never happened. But I already have many of the course materials so the Gender and Technology class wins by default.