Over the weekend, UT opened four free massive open online courses for registration.

The University’s edX courses, which will begin in September, are Ideas of the 20th Century, Introduction to Globalization, Bench to Bedside: Introduction to Drug Development and the Commercialization Process, and Energy Technology and Policy. 

The online courses are free and available to anyone and are part of a partnership with edX, a nonprofit. In October, the UT System Board of Regents pledged $10 million to edX, which offers free online courses. Founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year, edX has also partnered with the University of California at Berkeley, Rice University and several other higher education institutions.

Next spring, the University will add five more courses: Jazz Appreciation, Foundations of Data Analysis, Mathematics and Effective Thinking, Introduction to Embedded Systems, and Linear Algebra: Theory and Computation.

The classes are created by UT professors and students who take them receive a certificate of mastery or completion but no University credit. Students can register online at www.edx.org/university_profile/UTAustinX.