NextGenU.org is the world's first portal where anyone, anywhere, can get free, accredited higher education. For now, we concentrate our trainings (courses, degrees, certificates, residencies, etc.) primarily in the health sciences, using expert-created competencies and resources. We work in partnership with experts and professional organizations for quality assurance and endorsement, and we use cutting-edge educational innovations, including computer-based learning resources, and local and web-based peer-to-peer and mentoring experiences.

Yes -- we are the first cost-free, barrier-free, advertisement-free, educational organization available to everyone around the world.

NextGenU.org's learning model builds on educational best practices, including using high-quality online learning materials (e.g., text, videos, images), interactive peer activities (e.g., online chat rooms, and creating and assessing peer-generated case studies, images, and multiple-choice questions), and hands-on mentored experiences (e.g., seeing and discussing patients). This model mirrors and expands on the traditional university experience through interacting with peers and experts in the field of study, while learning basic knowledge on one's own via online learning materials. Our courses do not require traditional faculty involvement in lectures (that's part of how NextGenU.org can offer the trainings for free), although some competency sets require mentor-supervised activities (and those are spelled out in each course). We also strongly encourage teachers and training institutions around the world to link to the resources we’ve collected, even including creating full degrees with collections of our courses. We'd love to hear about it at info@NextGenU.org -- we're happy to provide you with data on your students if you're an institution wishing to adopt our training. No costs or strings are attached, although we would like to evaluate and improve your experience and co-author peer-reviewed publications using de-identified data with you (we have considerable experience in doing so).

An abundance of free educational resources already exists, so our trainings are not expensive to assemble and create. The expert-derived competencies on which we base our trainings are already freely posted, as are the expert-created online learning resources (taken only from universities, governments, peer-reviewed journals, and professional societies) that address those competencies. We identify and pair the competencies with resources and with interactive experiences that we create for trainees to perform with mentors and peer trainees. Trainees also write reviews of each other's work and interact in automatically translated chat rooms, forming an engaging global and sustainable community of practice, all for free. Trainings are further checked for quality and only posted after our expert volunteer Advisory Groups and co-sponsoring accredited organizations approve them.

“NextGenerationYou” was so named because we aim to constantly help educate the next generation of "you's", and we abbreviate as NextGenU.org, with a dot-org because we're non-profit. The name “NextGenU.org” also suggests that we remain leading-edge and sustainable for all future generations -- sustainable intellectually, financially, socially, and environmentally.

We are not a university. We do not grant credit or degrees; our university partners and other partners already accredited by their governments and professional societies give the credit for our courses (for free). Some people refer to us as the world's first free university, likely because no one else offers free university-level courses with free testing and certification for academic credit to the whole world, without limits of number or place.

Our business model is based on the efficient beneficence of grateful learners/inspired donors. Grateful learners include the many thousands of professionals who have freely posted the resources NextGenU.org links to, along with the course creators and staff who have created this site, either as volunteers or typically earning no more than USD 25 per hour. We also expect that many of NextGenU.org's trainees will donate money and/or time to create additional trainings, or to serve as mentors. More traditional donors have been key, as well -- inspired individuals, organizations, and governments that have collaborated with us, both financially and intellectually. Please click

or write to donate@nextgenu.org if you're interested in joining these grateful and inspired people.

Many people have asked us why we don't charge at least a little. First, we (and, we believe, the courts) don't think that it's legal or ethical fair use to charge a student to access material that we've neither developed nor posted, and which has been posted by others for free. Second, we have seen other organizations try different (but always monetized) systems, and no one else has succeeded in offering what we do: accredited and free courses and degrees. And third, we've figured out how we can give it away, so why should we charge? (That's the .org in us :-)

Students, practitioners, and universities/Health Ministries/other training institutions (in every country but North Korea and South Sudan) that want trainings in areas not easily available or accessible.

If you look here, you can see where we have tested and published on this free model in North American medical, public health, and undergraduate students arenas and with community health workers and primary care physicians in Kenya and in India, with as much knowledge gain and greater student satisfaction than with traditional courses, along with the creation of a community of practice that has learned to interact globally and productively.

Our technical support capacity is small, and you will need to access local support for any personal needs. However, we'd certainly like to know immediately if there are site-related issues that require fixing; please contact us at support@NextGenU.org.

Our offices are on desktops and laptops of contributors living and working on every continent! NextGenU.org is an activity of the Ulrich and Ruth Frank Foundation for International Health, incorporated as a non-profit foundation (a 501c3 organization) in the United States.

NextGenU.org’s founder, Dr. Erica Frank, began this work by starting to build NextGenU's health sciences online library (www.hso.info) in 2001, to determine if there was enough depth of resources to create a major health professional training program. Dr. Frank is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health; you can learn more about her here.

While course resources and strategies began to be assembled and piloted in 2001, the first students were invited to enroll in courses in the spring of 2012. After evaluating, refining, and expanding those offerings, we launched NextGenU.org globally in April 2013.

First, because WHO states that the world needs over 14.5 million additional health providers and that serious global resource constraints and remarkable open courseware opportunities mandate heavy use of computer-assisted technology to train them. Second, because medical and public health schools globally typically allow students to receive credit for educational experiences offered away from their home institution, making such “away rotations/electives” a familiar and credible model for this very important use of NextGenU’s courses. Third, NextGenU.org’s founders are experienced physicians and health sciences educators, training and teaching at some of North America’s leading medical schools.

• Erica Frank, MD, MPH, Founder – Efrank@NextGenU.org

You can find a list of currently offered courses here, and courses currently in development here. You may submit a suggestion for a new course by sending an email to info@nextgenu.org, or see at the bottom of our FAQs for instructions about how to suggest a new course.

We do not use a semester or term system. Students can begin learning whenever they choose and can take as long as they'd like with a course -- we're competency-based, not semester-based. If you are planning on taking a course for credit toward a degree at an institution where you are enrolled, they may have other rules about timing and documentation, and you should check before starting the course so you can give them the needed documentation to see what you've learned and accomplished. We will have lots to show for that -- from your final exam scores, peer and mentored activities, and other work products and metrics for each course.

We've thought of four major ways our courses can be used:

Anyone/Anywhere/Any time -- The first method of use is that anyone, anywhere can take these courses anytime they'd like. If you'd like a certificate of completion, you must have obtained the prior degree so we can feel confident that you would have the pre-requisites to understand the materials we're offering. So, for example, for our Master’s in Public Health, you need to produce a diploma for a Bachelor’s Degree or higher from a certified university.

A Student Enrolled in a University -- Individual students enrolled anywhere in the world can sign up to take the courses directly -- all of our trainings are certified by universities or specialty societies credentialed to offer courses. Alternatively, your institution can offer the course in part or in its entirety, including helping students identify local peers and mentors for the hands-on trainings. Many respected institutions around the world are doing just that with NextGenU.org, from the U.S. Walter Reed Army Medical Center (requiring NextGenU.org's Emergency Medicine training for senior medical students) to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (both in the U.S. and abroad). These trainings could be helpful for fundamentals (especially in developing countries) or for electives not available at your many schools (in both developing and industrialized countries) -- a full list of the offerings are *here*.

A Faculty Member or Dean at a Traditional University -- Maybe you are a Professor in or a Dean of a School of Medicine and you want to teach your students pre-clinical and clinical sciences, but you can't afford to hire another basic scientist or clinician for this purpose, or this hire wants/needs to spend most of their time researching and/or seeing patients (this is the situation faced by many institutions around the world). A NextGenU.org solution to this would be using our online trainings to teach facts and create significant interactions with an international community of mentors and peers interested in the course topic. Additionally, a university could identify local mentors and peers to help students acquire and practice skills, with scarce faculty members made available to answer higher-level questions.

A practitioner who'd like to learn more -- You may need to take continuing education for ongoing certification, or perhaps you'd like to grow professionally, but barriers like cost and time away from home and work always seem too high. NextGenU.org can allow you to train with a global community of peers anyplace there's a computer and at least occasional connectivity, and we provide a structure for local opportunities to observe and practice your skills with a mentor.

Perhaps there are other categories of learners we've missed? -- Please let us know how you use NextGenU.org (at QualitativeResearch@NextGenU.org). Whatever role you're in, it is worth noting that trainees should not be charged for using the openly posted learning materials that are the foundation of our free training, as this is likely not fair use of this openly posted intellectual property – but institutions may indeed charge for providing mentors and evaluation for full degrees.

There are no admission requirements to take any course. Anyone who wishes to take any NextGenU.org course may do so, free of barriers. For a trainee to take a course for credit, however, we need to be confident that you possess the pre-requisite experience and knowledge to understand the educational level at which the training is presented; in other words, to earn course credit/certification for a course, you must be currently registered at a recognized academic institution at that same level OR have obtained the prior degree. If you'd like a certificate of completion, you must provide proof of the prior degree. For example, for our Master’s in Public Health, you need a diploma for a Bachelor’s Degree or higher from a certified university – and, for a full degree like the Master’s in Public Health, you need a (local or remote) health related and officially recognized institution that will provide you mentorship (this could be one’s university or ministry/health department employer) and that will guide you through skills-based training components (e.g., practicum/capstone projects).

Click on this link (it will take you to our list of courses), pick one you'd like to check out, and leap in, either just to learn or browse, or to register and take it for credit.

All of our courses are offered in partnership with organizations (universities, professional specialty societies, and/or government agencies) that are certified to give courses for credit. At your request, we can email the following to your designee (such as a faculty member or registrar) at your home university:

• a link to and description of the course training, so they can see the components of it
• your work products, such as the required case study and multiple choice questions, and any other optional shared materials that you produce and authorize to share with them
• your evaluations -- the mentored-, self-, and peer-to-peer-assessments, and your final exam scores (with comparisons with the median scores of others at your level of training, and with everyone who's taken the course). In our prior work, NextGenU.org's faculty has supervised thousands of students using more traditional courses, clerkships, internships, and other "visiting rotations", and we feel confident that the metrics that NextGenU.org provides to home universities are far richer than the feedback schools typically get when faculty outside the home institutions provide some of their trainees' education. NextGenU.org can also provide final exams that your university could directly supervise your taking, and we can also videotape your taking the final exam and give other test use metrics (time/websites visited during the exam, etc.) to your home university (of course, all for free). We're also happy to hear requests from institutions for other metrics that would provide even more information about their students' performance. We suggest that, as with any course you take outside of your home institution, you check in early with your university to be sure they'll allow the credit, and that you emphasize the accredited cosponsoring organizations offering the course, and the multiple evaluation metrics you'll be giving your school so they can determine your level of effort and accomplishment.
• a copy of your certificate of completion, with the cosponsoring universities and other organizations listed.

The best help that we've integrated into NextGenU.org is the presence for everyone of an international set of peers with whom you directly interact, including in a chat room (with automated translation available) where peers, mentors, course graduates, course creators, and advisory committee members visit to provide advice and direction.

Through the powerful gift of Google Translate, all of the text included in NextGenU.org can be translated into >100 languages. While this service is limited by the weaknesses of an automated translator tool, Google's program encourages submissions to them of better translations, and hovering one's mouse over the translated text makes the original English text pop up.

NextGenU.org's logo is a small homage laden with a large amount of symbolism. To NextGenU.org's founders, it looks like:

• the silhouette of an apple for the teacher: the apple signifies health (traditional North American icons of education and health)
• a heart/love symbol, because NextGenU.org is the product of the enormous generosity of tens of thousands of smart, kind, eager people around the world, because we have warm senses of humor, and for many of the other attributes cited for the heart symbol here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol)
• an academic shield or a mortarboard (the hat worn at many formal graduation ceremonies)
• the biblical 10 commandments in silhouette (we told you it was quite a rich list!)
• the fullest expression of our name that we can fit in a small space (including the .org, because that's where our URL is, and that's where our philosophical foundation rests)
• the "bright green" colors that we use to denote intelligent and meaningful sustainability

What does our logo symbolize to you? Click here to tell us!

Imagine a 25 year old woman named Hope, living in Kikuyu, Kenya. Hope has finished University, and would like to stay in Kikuyu and would like to become a doctor. Since she hasn't taken all the pre-medical courses needed for admission, she takes NextGenU.org's Pre-Health Sciences Certificate. She continues to work at a local job to earn a living, and takes our Certificate from home for free over two years' time, doing well on our assessments, and developing a good relationship with a local doctor at whose clinic she volunteers one day per week. Hope is offered admission to Kikuyu's new medical school, at Presbyterian University of East Africa (PUEA). NextGenU.org has partnered with PUEA since 2010 to offer and test many of our basic and clinical science trainings, and Hope takes many of those courses during her training. Hope graduates and takes her Gyn/Ob residency training at a local hospital, using the residency program we have developed in partnership with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics and Medical Women's International Association. Later, when she is in practice, she gets free Continuing Medical Education through NextGenU.org, and she is a clinical mentor every year to several medical students for their Gyn/Ob rotation.

You can take exams in one of two ways:

• Directly supervised at your home institution: If you give us the name, job title, and email address of a University official who wishes to proctor your exam, we will email them your test to have you complete it online under their supervision.
• Indirectly supervised anywhere: We can automatically generate multiple test validity metrics, including the amount of time taken for each question, other sites visited by your computer while you take the test, and a videotaped record of your test-taking.

We offer no grades; we do offer certificates of completion and abundant metrics assessing your performance in the course vs. the performances of others. We offer to freely provide to you and your designees your final exam score (or scores, if you take it more than once), with comparisons between your scores and the average scores of others taking the course, including specific comparisons with others at your level of training. In addition, you will be assessed by your peers and your mentor, and you must pass all required mentored/peer activities to receive a certificate of completion (although you may retake a course, until you have achieved competence). All of our trainings have sponsoring organizations that are certified by a national or international accrediting body as being authorized to provide courses for credit.

Students are assessed in four different ways:

• Self-assessment -- Students complete questionnaires that help them reflect on what they have learned and to help them (and us) more deeply learn from their experience in the course.
• Peer assessment -- Students interact with other students who are taking the same course. These peers may reside in the same geographic area; if this is the case, students may interact mainly in person. Regardless, students interact with others in the course via built-in real-time chat rooms, asynchronous forums, and other electronic media. Students will create, be peer assessed, and perform peer assessments on three multiple-choice questions and on other peer-reviewed activities for each course. As this is a competency-based system, students can re-do assignments until they pass all the criteria.
• Mentor assessment -- Except for basic science courses (where a mentor is optional), students interact with a mentor, ideally in person (although distance mentoring is acceptable if available and no one is available locally), completing learning activities, observing, and getting valuable hands-on experience. At the end of the course, mentors will fill out a standardized questionnaire about the students’ skills, knowledge, behavior, and attitudes.
• Objective knowledge assessment -- Students take quizzes throughout the course,along with a final multiple-choice exam at the end of the course. The content of the quizzes and final exam come directly from the learning materials student are asked to study as part of each competency.

The peer and mentored learning activities are practical experiences that will help you use what you learn in the NextGenU.org course. These exercises will help you learn more than you would just by reading a text or listening to a lecture, since you will actively discuss and practice important skills with your peers and/or mentor.

These are our current best answers to a lot of questions that we and others have posed about better methods for higher education -- methods that have been tested and found to be of consistently high quality and free of cost, barriers, advertisements, and greenhouse gas emissions. We are actively piloting and refining these trainings with institutions from New York to Nairobi, and we know that some of our current approaches will be supplanted by new, better ideas. The leaders of NextGenU.org have studied and taught at some of the finest educational institutions in the world, have considerable expertise in education, and have worked with those with more expertise to help us refine and implement our ideas -- and we would be pleased to hear your thoughts on how NextGenU.org can do better at info@NextGenU.org.

Learning online can be very efficient and convenient, but it also can lacks the advantages of human contact. For money of our trainings, their published, expert-created competency set requires some one-to-one mentored activities so that you can directly learn from and interact with someone possessing experience in the subject. this is often a critical component of an active, high-quality learning environment and is therefore also offered as an optional activity even when competencies don’t require it. This mentored component can be done in person or remotely through Zoom/Skype/etc.; we hope and expect that this person will become a permanent part of your professional network.

A mentor should be a qualified expert in the field of your NextGenU.org course -- they might be a professor at your university who is offering this training as a course under their supervision, or a local practicing professional who is willing to spend some time teaching you, or someone remotely who you’ve identified through your networks. The suitable level of training and practice for a mentor is that they should have successfully completed the training you are taking, should have >=1 year’s practical experience in that field, and are willing to mentor. Soon we'll have some other methods to help you find mentors.

If you are not taking a NextGenU.org course for credit, you do not necessarily need to find a mentor.

There are many ways you can help supervise trainees. Because NextGenU.org is both free and comprehensive, we rely on our trainees' learning from local volunteer practitioners -- with whom they might help take care of patients if they're a medical student, or co-publish (at NextGenU.org) a case study on an interesting patient if they're an academician in training, or co-author a letter to the editor of the local paper if they're studying a public health topic such as Climate Change and Health. Mentors can also be volunteers who might remotely monitor chat rooms or supervise distant trainees via phone/Skype/Gchat.

Yes, it’s encouraged – in person face-to-face is even better than remote face-to-face!

If you need help finding a peer, we'll select one for you, ideally a peer who can write in your language of choice without using a tool like Google Translate to translate everyone's work into English.

We expect NextGenUsers to always act respectfully - please let us know at Rude@NextGenU.org about anyone behaving inappropriately.

You can

to go to our PayPal donation site, or contact us at donations@nextgenu.org if you'd like to choose other ways to donate, including specifying if there's a particular existing training you'd like your funding to support the growth and maintenance of, and for you to suggest new trainings that you'd like to see supported.

So glad you asked! Please send us a very brief email to NewTraining@NextGenU.org that answers the following questions:

• What topic will the training address?
• Who are the likely learners, and why is this training needed?
• Who could do the work of identifying the online resources, designing the peer and mentored activities, and/or creating an initial bank of multiple-choice questions?