Open Free online courses

In the fall of 2011, a free online course was offered by Stanford University on the subject of artificial intelligence. The instructors were world-renowned experts in their field and this massive open online course, or MOOC, wound up with an unprecedented enrollment of 160,000 students and ushered in a new era of virtual education.But what if artificial intelligence isn’t your thing? The good news is free resources are rapidly coming online for business owners and entrepreneurs, covering topics ranging from leadership to innovation to startups. Here’s a look at some of them:

Take the challenge: One recently launched offering is the 21 Day Leadership Challenge.The challenge features management consultant and New York Times bestselling business author of Tribal Leadership Dave Logan in a series of 3-minute videos delivered via email. Each video contains both information and a homework assignment, most of which take about 20 minutes to complete, with a few one hour assignments mixed in. The three-week program promises greater confidence, along with a better ability to light a fire of enthusiasm under tribe.

Leading innovation: Coursera is another major player in this space, with 33 university partners, including Cal Tech, Columbia, Duke, Princeton, Stanford and UC San Francisco. Coursera offers the class Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses,” which starts in January 2013, or Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations,” which starts in February 2013. The classes are offered by the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University respectively, and require a four to eight-hour workload per week.The long and the short of startups: If you’re looking for a quicker hit of learning and inspiration, consider the free videos available at StartupSchool.org from Y Combinator’s annual program. This year’s lineup included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, and famed angel investor Ron Conway. Each video is about 30 minutes.

And if those talks put you in the mood to join the startup scene., consider visiting www.Udacity.com to register for “How to Build a Startup. The course is presented on demand by Steve Blank, the co-author, along with Bob Dorf, of “The Startup Owner’s Manual.” Blank’s book and “Business Model Generation by Osterwalder and Pigneur are the suggested, but not required, texts. Enrollment is fast and allows you to participate in discussion forums, view the 8 lectures, and track your completion percentage via a progress meter.Whether you are looking at a slow end-of-year season or contemplating your new year’s resolutions, it might behoove you as a leader and entrepreneur to jump onboard the MOOC bandwagon.