Oct 09, 2014 12:09 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Some of the brightest minds in science in technology today want to teach video game design and online education for free.

According to USA Today, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is offering free online courses for game design and educational technology. The first series of massive open online courses (MOOCs), focusing on the latter, kicked off Thursday.

The next one, which will teach game design, starts Oct. 22 and MIT has two more future MOOCs planned to teach on educational gaming and technology.

"There has to be a real need," the course's host Eric Klopfer, director of the Education Arcade, told USA Today. "What we'd like to get out of it is some great, interesting ideas that maybe some people move forward with."

Some 50 years ago, scientists at MIT invented the first video game and the technology has grown exponentially since. Smartphones and mobile devices have also become a way for enthusiast to create their own games and upload them straight to an online marketplace like the iOS or Android store.

Games today run the tables in complexity, from Flappy Bird to Assassin's Creed, but it is proving to be a lucrative field. MIT's game development MOOC will try to enable people to create their own game, with the final project being to create a formal proposal to start a campaign with a crowd funding platform.

MIT will try to keep their MOOCs from being a dry recorded lecture and will incorporate group work and interviews with experts in the field.

"We know that the stuff that has caught on most with MOOCs are things that can be assessed through automated testing," Scot Osterweil, Education Arcade's creative director, told USA Today. "We know we're not the only ones trying to think about more project-based MOOCs, but we also know that it hasn't advanced very far."

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