OnlineDegree.com Is Finally Open

[Merlin]

It looks like the core part of each course comes from either Great Courses or UCI Open Courseware.  Each lesson includes the main lecture (from one of these sources) and then supplementary videos and materials. The quiz description says that the quizzes are based on the main lecture.

For some people who prefer to use text instead of video/audio, some of them have closed captioning (but not all).  Transcripts are available from Great Courses if you buy the course in some format (cheapest is audio). For example, the Cyber course can be purchased for 19.95 in the audio format and $15 for the transcript addon ($34.95). Another option is to buy the Great Course Plus membership (14 day free and $0.99 for the first month, $19.99 thereafter), and then you can guidebooks for each course. While the guidebooks don't have the transcripts, they do have all the key points of every lecture in Great Courses. The UCI Irvine courses do not have transcripts or close-captions. Also, the quality of the Great Course videos is significantly better than UCI Irvine videos (which is to be expected, since Great Courses is a commercial entity). It does make me wonder how Open Degree has obtained licenses to distribute Great Courses for free. Some of them are rather pricey on Great Courses.

There is also quite a bit of content from Crash Course (which does not allow for distribution if someone has to pay), and many OER Creative Commons resources (also does not allow the material to be used for commercial purposes), thus Online Degree cannot charge for their courses. Thus, it seems the service has to remain free. I still wonder about the business model.

A bit of searching and reviewing videos, it appears that the main lectures from each course are from the following sources:

Great Courses:
CyberSecurity: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...rfare.html
Nutrition: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...rcise.html
Finance & Accounting: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...ccess.html
Marketing: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...ccess.html
Cooking: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...oking.html
Robotics: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/robotics.html
Modern History: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...story.html
Computer Science: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/...cises.html


UCI Irvine
Introduction to Public Health: http://open.uci.edu/courses/pubhlth1_pri...ealth.html
Education - Language and Literacy: http://open.uci.edu/courses/education_15...eracy.html
Astronomy: http://open.uci.edu/courses/physics_20b_cosmology.html
Climate Change and Cryosphere: http://open.uci.edu/courses/ess_21_on_th...phere.html
Intro to Micro Economics: http://open.uci.edu/courses/the_power_of...world.html
Psychology: http://open.uci.edu/courses/psych_9bpsy_...ntals.html
Biology: http://open.uci.edu/courses/biosci_94_or...stems.html

Nice... I already own some of those great courses videos.