MIT began this new trend earlier this year with the first MOOC, or Massively Open Online Course. 

MIT's first "MITx" course is called Circuits and Electronics, and 10,000 students worldwide made it through a recent midterm exam in the course.

Now, Harvard and MIT will soon begin offering five additional courses under a joint MOOC project "edX." And, Stanford, Princeton, Penn and Michigan are joining together to offer free online courses as well.

Although the initial offerings are computer science, technology, and engineering courses, humanities courses are coming soon as well.

Click here to read more about MITx.

Click here to read more about edX.

A YouTube video on edX can be viewed here.

A recent NY Times article on this new trend can be found here.

Very bright high schools students and adults, too may be interested in these courses.