41–50 of 88 posts
surprised by the courses that are more popular in this list.
I think the pattern is that the foundational or introductory courses are popular as they have a
larger audience. But it doesn't comment on the quality of the course. An interesting data point
is the social media "Share" widget that appears on the right column [0].
The Design Of Computer Programs on Udacity by Peter Norvig is pretty awesome. As someone who's only been seriously programming for a year or two , each problem set went like this : Write the code here to do X : I write a messy 4 liner after lots of thinking. Professor Norvig comes along and does it in a simple functional one liner. Mind blown. He teaches good functional style program design one epiphany at a time.
I'm a little surprised that there is no mention of iTunes University, or maybe that doesn't count as a MOOC. I know there are some very popular courses on there that are easy to access.
iTunes university is really quite awesome. Only you need an Apple product to access it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would agree with and extend your remarks that getting a title of nobility from a brick and mortar uni gives you a vocational meal ticket, so you can motivate grinders by asking if they like money of if they like eating food, and then they'll grind away for letters on a transcript. But in MOOC land I get nothing. I did the complete automata class mostly to see if there's much new since I did a brick and mortar versi…
It's not clear what you're looking for exactly but, if anything, MOOCs (Coursera at any rate) have cut back on issuing completion certificates in the absence of paying a fee. Their problem, one of them anyway, is that certificates basically aren't worth anything as a certification mechanism in most cases so very few are willing to pay for them. And, I expect, that if you start from the assumptions that 1.) MOOC certi…
I'm proposing that as a bottom up narrative, they continue to include extensive grind barriers such as peculiar scheduling and pacing, someone else designing arbitrary barriers in terms of assignments with firm due dates, etc. Yet the reward has been cut out as per reasons in the top down narrative, etc. So from the bottom up perspective you're left with a stereotypical grind game where the reward has been removed, and from that theoretical model, the dropout rate makes sense. Then when people sign up and get something out of partial participation, it makes no sense to use a successful grind game metric measurement when its a failed grind game therefore the players aren't cooperating because they feel no need to do so. Because "MOOC as a grind game" has failed, a MOOC is a place to learn, not a place to jump thru hoops or not get a reward other than making someone else's completion metric result look good.
You can run a grind game without a vocational meal ticket reward model. WoW and Eve do just fine.
My suggestion would be to use advanced technology to abandon the grind game aspects, assuming higher completion rates are inherently valuable. Even if completion rates are not valuable, removal of pointless grind will result in better operating conditions for the students. Why must class schedules correspond vaguely to the northern hemisphere agricultural growing season? If you're not teaching project management, why are due dates so important? Why is there (typically) only one very fixed learning track if more exist or there is a "chose two from column B and three from column C" aspect inherent in the field itself? All of that would be very difficult to implement at Harvard in 1640, but due to technological advances would not be very challenging to implement today.
The Design Of Computer Programs on Udacity by Peter Norvig is pretty awesome. As someone who's only been seriously programming for a year or two , each problem set went like this : Write the code here to do X : I write a messy 4 liner after lots of thinking. Professor Norvig comes along and does it in a simple functional one liner. Mind blown. He teaches good functional style program design one epiphany at a time.
It's heartening there are so many math focused courses. With the Calculus course at https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/ - I'm going over differential calculus right now, but I'm getting somewhat stuck on the Chain Rule, and in particular working out how to use it to differentiate 2^x. The courses I've found so far haven't been all that helpful, even Khan academy is confusing me somewhat. Does this course explai…
Since 2 = e ^ ln 2, use the identity: 2^x = (e^(ln 2))^x = e ^ (x * ln 2)
I did #27 "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" during Feb-April this year. I enjoyed it a lot and found it challenging without being impossible to complete. Finished with a distinction and a feeling of great satisfaction. I'm now doing Coursera's Interaction Design specialisation [1], which is proving to be very informative and a lot of fun. If you're considering doing a MOOC then I'd definitely recommend it. Choo…
I would also recommend the Cryptography 1 course by Dan Boneh on Coursera [3]. Excellent if you are at all interested in the subject.
I always download the lecture videos, slides, quizzes, labs and exams because, as mentioned, many of the courses don't allow access once the class is completed.
You definitely have to have plenty of self discipline to complete MOOCs. And I don't have any delusions about a Coursera certificate being useful in landing a job; that's not what I'm after. I'm building the skills I want to apply to my own projects.
[1] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhudatascience [2] https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics [3] https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto
Im Noticing a lot of these courses are coursera, and one of the most frustrating things about the plattform is the fact that most courses close and access to course materials/videos etc. is revoked after the course is over, this destroys the whole point of a mooc for me, and this choice seems arbitrary. Why cant education materials just be open and remain open to everyone, journals and textbooks included? There are e…
My intuition is that the venture-backed model of the other platforms will make it extremely difficult to maintain a long-term vision of free, ubiquitous education. I did find one edX course which decayed, simply because it required student journaling and deeply personal discussion, which would have been inappropriate to open to the public.
1. Not as exclusively as I thought - I just saw a great course from Coursera and signed up. To date I've only completed edX courses though.