Particularly in computer science at the graduate level, students from MIT are coming to Harvard for classes they cannot get elsewhere.

Want to learn more about Big Data? MIT is taking on the buzzy topic in an online course designed for tech pros. Tackling the Challenges of Big Data runs from March 4 to April 1 and costs $495.

Offline, the course is one of the core subjects that all MIT undergraduates studying electrical engineering and computer science have to take.

Wondering what all the fuss is about? Here’s a guide to our coverage of massive open online courses.

Malan’s Introduction to Computer Science course captures many of these currents. The on-campus version is Harvard’s most popular, with around 800 students.

And I was, literally, the first woman to get a first computer science Ph.D. at MIT. There were other women who got computer-science degrees at other schools before me.