Johns Hopkins University partners with Coursera to offer free online classes

Johns Hopkins University is now one of 16 universities nationwide offering free online classes through Coursera.
 
Launched by Stanford University computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng in fall 2011, Coursera is yet another company offering Massive Open Online Courses. According to Wired Academic, when Coursera first launched at Stanford, two courses were offered and nearly 200,000 students signed up.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Hopkins joins such universities as Duke, Georgia Tech, and the University of Virginia.

Initial course offerings this fall from the Bloomberg School of Public Health will come in areas such as data analysis, biostatistics and “the principles of obesity economics.” Classes could include online lectures, discussion groups and exams.
Though some of the participating universities will offer credits through Coursera, Hopkins will not. [James] Yager [associate dean for academic affairs at the Bloomberg School of Public Health] said the courses will not offer the level of interaction with professors or the sophisticated evaluations the university demands in for-credit offerings. [more]

Johns Hopkins is the only university in Maryland currently partnered with Coursera.