"Real" (Non-SL specific) classes and lectures in SL?

I've got an itch to learn about Rennaisance History, or cosmology, or learning about Italian marble or calculus or thermodynamics, whatever. I know there are some colleges in SL, but do any of them have classes or lectures an average person could pick up on the fly without being an official, enrolled student?

Thanks.

I wish I knew. That would be cool to audit a class. But how would it work? Voice streaming I guess. The students would have to get a raised hand gesture - or I suppose they could just try to rezz a cube behind them for the same effect.

I'd sit in on an archeology lecture, or music history. Or paleontology. Or astrophysics. Fiction writing. . .

Come to think of it there's probably all this and more on YouTube if I would just take a break from watching old progressive rock concerts. It doesn't have the immediacy though.

I know the Science Center group has lectures and talks frequently, they also stream the BBC Naked Scientist show into SL Sundays... Ironically I'm not in the group but you should be able to find it in search... Although now that I read about the nature podcast, too bad it's not at a good time for me.

Would things like this fit what you are looking for maybe?

"Curious about stars, black holes, galaxies, quasars, supernovae, or the universe? Then come to "Ask an Astronomer"! All are welcome - a professional astronomer is on hand."

"Next week Nature will be playing SL host to a conference from LSE. Entitled Complexity and Policy: the Global Governance of New Health Technologies, it will feature several speakers and a panel discussion. Topics include biotechnology patents, personal genomics and policy-making and the role of regulation in healthcare foresight."

"Dr Knop talks Astronomy Topic: Colliding Galaxies
Stars within a galaxy like our own almost never collide with each other. Galaxies themselves, however, run into each other all the time. What's more, when the Universe was younger and smaller, they ran into each other more often. In this talk, I'll give an overview of the sorts of things we see observationally when galaxies run into each other."

I also know outside of SL, many universities have videos of talks online which you can simply watch.

Here's a link to some links to online courses and classes: http://lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education-online-201979.php .

Strangely, there are no events listed for calculus in the SL events search.

Here's a link of SL educational stuff: http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses

another: http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

and http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/education-use-virtual-world

a mailing list: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators

An organization that I attended RL as they did a simulcast SL/RL simply had the SL attendees send IMs to one of the other organization people in the SL room and he passed the questions to the speaker (much like a lot of webcasts do). The whole process had two support people working all the time, as well as the speaker.