Since it is ‘going back to school’ time in a lot of places, I thought I would devote this week’s posts to lifelong learning and training – some online, some in person, some free and others for payment.

Today I would like to bring to your attention a scheme run by the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA.

Below you will find an introduction to the scheme, MIT OpenCourseWare, which is completely free to use and funded by donations from individuals and users. Independent learners can brush up their skills and also tackle new subjects. It has more than one million users each month.

Legal and financial topics can be found in the section ‘Sloan School of Management’. To whet your appetites, here is a selection of examples that might be relevant to readers of this blog:

• Introduction to Copyright Law
• Patents, Copyrights, and the Law of Intellectual Property
• Legal Aspects of Property and Land Use
• The Law of Mergers and Acquisitions
• Communicating Across Cultures
• Rhetoric

Courses can also be downloaded for working offline.

You might also be interested in this recent post on a free online course in translation skills offered by Birkbeck College, London, UK.