The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) begins registration for its first free online course today. The school, which announced its online initiative MITx back in December, will allow students to take the electronics course, 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics at www.mix.mit.edu.

The introductory course will begin on March 5 and will take three months to complete. Students will have access to an e-book, video lectures, midterms, final exams, weekly homework assignments and labs. Those who successfully complete the course will receive a certificate of completion from MIT.

Enrollment for the first course is unlimited, though it demands a background in mathematics and physics. Nonetheless, MITx's initiative represents an increasingly important intersection between technology and education.

The program is led by Provost L. Rafael Reif according to MIT News. Students worldwide are increasingly supplementing their classroom education with a variety of online tools. Many members of the MIT faculty have been experimenting with integrating online tools into the campus education, said Reif. We will facilitate those efforts, many of which will lead to novel learning technologies that offer the best possible online educational experience to non-residential learners. Both parts of this new initiative are extremely important to the future of high-quality, affordable, accessible education.

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