Copyright
Institution: HarvardX (edX)
Date: July 07, 2014 - July 27, 2014 (Archived Course)
Bio: Copyright is a twelve week Harvard Law course on the history, theory, and practice of copyright law. This edX course was unique in that it was originally limited to five hundred students selected from an application process. These five hundred students were put into four A/B groups with variables in some of the supplementary reading material or tools used in the course, then were further divided into sections of twenty five students lead by teaching assistants for a number of live discussions.
The course is now in an Archived state; which unfortunately means students no longer have access to the discussion forums, guided conversations, or the final (and only) exam. What you do get is a series of twelve lectures, six guest speaker events, and supplemental material in the form of some readings and a "digital companion map" which supplements the videos and your notes.
The lectures themselves are presented very well, containing around 90 minutes of video for each of the twelve week's topics. The material is easy to understand even if you have no previous experience taking a law course; and there are a number of anecdotal stories and cases to illustrate the points. The material covers both the application of how the law has been interpreted, as well as four different theories as to what the law should be or how it might be changed.
Each weeks lecture consist of three videos ranging in length from 15 to 50 minutes, making some of them harder to scan though compared to the 7-15 minute length segments in many other online classes. There are six 90 minute guest speaker segments with people from various industries or with direct experience with copyright concerns that are quite interesting as well.
I finished up the Archived course in about three weeks, out of my own interest in the subject. It hurts that the course is missing out on any kind of retention or graded material in it's archive state, but for people who are self motivated or just generally interested in the topic they will get quite a bit out of the course.