This article was published on January 16, 2017

Harvard’s complete photography course is now available for free online [updated]


Harvard’s complete photography course is now available for free online [updated] Image by: Michelle Spencer

If your resolution for 2017 is to take better photographs than your current blurry, badly composed effort, you’ll want to check out this free MOOC from Harvard University –the school where Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates cut their teeth.

ALISON – one of the many repositories of online learning courses – has uploaded Harvard’s photography course to their platform under a Creative Commons license.

The course consists of twelve modules that cover the fundamentals of photography – from software tools to composition and light. There’s also a thirteenth module which serves as an assessment of all you know. If you pass this with a score of 80 percent or higher, and you can get yourself a diploma to print and hang on your wall.

There is a caveat though: The course itself is from 2009, and while the fundamentals are still true, some of the lessons on software tools aren’t exactly current.

Harvard, obviously, isn’t the only prestigious university that’s put its material on the Internet; UCLA, Yale, Princeton have all launched their own efforts. But most of these tend to be geared towards computer science or academics. Therefore, it’s nice to see one with more creative pursuits in mind.

Update 01/17: Our post previously stated incorrectly that Harvard uploaded this course to ALISON. This has been amended to reflect that ALISON uploaded the course from Harvard OpenCourseWare themselves under a Creative Commons licence. 
Update 01/18: ALISON has said it’s to remove the course by February 15, 2017. The site says it will be replaced with a new course, created from scratch by ” leading photography experts”. 

Via Konbini.

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