Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest universities, is joining with edX, a nonprofit online venture founded by M.I.T. and Harvard, to offer an online freshman year that will be available worldwide with no admissions process and full university credit.

In the new Global Freshman Academy, each credit will cost $200, but students will not have to pay until they pass the courses, which will be offered on the edX platform as MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses.

“Leave your G.P.A., your SATs, your recommendations at home,” said Anant Agarwal, the chief executive of edX. “If you have the will to learn, just bring your Internet connection and yourself, and you can get a year of college credit.”

Under Michael Crow, its president, Arizona State has been a leader in using technology to serve large numbers of students — for example, through web-based introductory math classes. Still, before now it had never embraced MOOCs, free courses offered by edX, Coursera and others that began three years ago — shaking up the traditional academic world and attracting 100,000 or more students.