FAQ - About SEE

1. Why has Stanford chosen to make courses available for free?

Stanford and the School of Engineering believe that technology transfer is an important part of its mission. This includes research and teaching. SEE is an important step in making important pieces of its curriculum available to a broad audience.

2. How is SEE being funded?

SEE's pilot program was funded by Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that helped launch Cisco, Google, Yahoo, NVidia and many other successful technology startups.

3. How did you decide which courses to offer?

The introductory Computer Science courses provide a powerful platform for a wide variety of students both within and beyond Stanford. Computer Science and Electrical Engineering faculty also raised their hands to offer more advanced courses in Artificial Intelligence, and Linear Systems & Optimization for SEE’s pilot.

4. When will additional courses be added?

The SEE pilot has ended. No new courses will be added.

5. Are the SEE offerings based on Stanford courses?

Yes. SEE courses include the content offered in an actual campus course including lecture videos, as well as all lecture slides, reading lists and handouts, homework assignments, quizzes, examinations, and when appropriate, solution sets.

6. Can SEE content be reused or incorporated into other courses or media?

Unless otherwise expressly indicated, SEE content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY NC SA) 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode). This license allows for SEE content to be used for non-commercial purposes and to be remixed, adapted, and modified into new content as long as the original source is credited and the new creations are used for non-commercial purposes and distributed under the same license (CC BY NC SA). See the license link above for more information.

7. I own the copyright to some of the content used in a lecture and have not granted permission to use the content. Please remove it immediately.

Stanford has taken steps to secure permission to use the copyrighted content contained in SEE offerings when use of the content is outside of the fair use doctrine of US copyright law. If you are the rights holder of any images in these offerings and have concerns, please contact chris.kong@stanford.edu and we will immediately review your issues.

8. How can I provide feedback on SEE?

We encourage feedback from users on the effectiveness of SEE, how the courses are being used, what features are important to you, what subject areas we should consider offering in the future, etc. We are asking users to complete a survey and/or to send comments to see-information@lists.stanford.edu.

FAQ - Using SEE

1. Do I need to register to access SEE?

No, SEE is free and does not require registration.

2. Will I receive credit for taking courses through SEE?

No. Although SEE courses are identical to those taken by Stanford students, you will not receive Stanford credit.

3. Will I receive feedback on the homework assignments, examinations, labs, or programming assignments that I complete?

No. SEE does not offer an open communication channel to the course instructors and professors. In most cases, solution sets are included. However, there may be instances where solutions are not offered since the problem sets may be re-used in future course offerings or are similar to problems being used by other instructors.

4. Can I ask course instructors or professors questions regarding course content?

No. SEE is intended to make Stanford course content available to the public. Unfortunately because this audience is vast, instructors and professors will not be available to answer questions or respond to personal e-mails. In addition, we hope that our online communities will provide a resource for SEE students to discuss coursework.

5. I am formally enrolled as a Stanford student and am taking courses online via the Stanford Center for Professional Development. Why can’t I download lecture videos for all my online courses?

The content used by SEE has been cleared of all copyright issues. SCPD courses have not been cleared in the same way, which prevents the downloading of their courses.

6. Can my institution repurpose SEE content into full courses and offer Stanford accreditation?

SEE content may be repurposed by other educational institutions; however, Stanford will not accredit any programs that repurpose SEE content into their academic programs.

7. It appears that in some cases content has been removed from the lecture videos or course materials. Why?

For some content used in the on-campus offerings, the copyright belongs to a third-party. We removed such material whenever we could not secure permission to include this content in the online offerings. In most cases, the deletion is noted.

8. Some of the programming assignments require connecting to Stanford servers to run various pieces of software. Will I have access to this software?

Users of SEE will not have access to these Stanford servers and software. In most cases Stanford has secured a site license to allow its students to access the software. Similar software is generally available to the public for purchase or download.

9. What is a SUNet ID and will I receive one?

SUNetID’s are accounts available only to Stanford students and staff. These accounts grant access to Stanford’s network of computer systems and resources.

10. Can I download lecture material?

Yes, all the content offered through SEE is available for download. You can freely download the PDF documents from the site itself. The option to download the videos is available right from the HTML5-based video player.

11. Can I download the complete course?

We have created Zip files of all non-video content for each course so that users do not have to download individual files. Due to the size of video files, each lecture must be downloaded separately.

12. Why aren’t course packs available for download?

The majority of course packs contain material that has been photocopied from published books and other copyrighted material. Due to copyright issues associated with the materials contained in the readers they cannot be offered online. Much of the content found in the course readers can be found in online journals and in other publications available to the public.

FAQ - Technical Questions

1. What software is required to view the Stanford Engineering Everywhere content?

Depending on the asset and file-type being viewed, there are several pieces of software that may be required:

2. What are the system requirements to view the videos:

SEE offers several options for viewing videos including an enhanced HTML5-based user interface, and videos on YouTube and iTunes.

  • Enhanced HTML5-based User Interface:
    • PC:
      • Operating System: Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8+
      • Browser: HTML 5 supported web browser: IE9+, Firefox24+, Chrome22+
    • Mac:
      • Operating System: Mac OS X version 10.4+
      • Browser: HTML 5 supported web browser: Safari7+, Firefox24+, Chrome22+
    • Mobile Devices:
      • Browser: HTML 5 supported web browser: Safari, IE desktop, Firefox, Chrome
    • Linux:
      • Browser: HTML 5 supported web browser
    • Network Connection: High-speed network connection (DSL+) for streaming

3. When I click on a link I receive the error “File not found” or “This page cannot be found”.

It likely means a URL has been changed or a file has been removed. Please send us an email specifying where the error is occurring.

4. I cannot open the downloadable documents.

The majority of documents are offered in PDF format. Please download and install the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.