Online courses from the world's top scholars

#1

Post by see » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

Online courses from the world's top scholars
academicearth.org

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#2

Post by jefe78 » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 6:23 PM UTC

I have to say, I'm a huge fan of the MIT CompSci course. A more direct link is http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#3

Post by Bossman » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 9:34 PM UTC

jefe78 wrote: post #2

I have to say, I'm a huge fan of the MIT CompSci course. A more direct link is http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Always been a great resource.

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#4

Post by Bossman » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

Awesome. So glad I found this. Not some interesting topics on there that I hadn't seen before.

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#5

Post by Getahobby » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

So you know that scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon's character chides the Harvard student for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education that could be obtained for the cost of some late fees at the library? That is only getting more and more true.

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#6

Post by msie » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 10:13 PM UTC

Awesome: Gilbert Strang teaching Linear Algebra!

http://academicearth.org/courses/linear-algebra

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#7

Post by tardis » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 10:39 PM UTC

Thanks! This reminds me of what our government is trying to do (they're trying to create curriculum based entirely on freely accessible online material).

I forget where I read it from but stuff like this (and the OpenCourseWare movement) is definitely an area of education that's pretty fascinating to see develop.

Re: Online courses from the world's top scholars

#8

Post by kanak » Mon, Feb 21, 2011, 2:02 AM UTC

As much as I love OCW (I've "done" several courses there, including problem sets, exams etc), I think the problem of not being able to interact with an expert is still a very big limitation.

For example, suppose I'm studying mathematics. I miss being able to show a proof to someone to get feedback on it. Sure, I know if I succeeded in proving what I set out to prove, but is there a better way I could have proved the same thing?

It's like if I learned to code, and had unit tests to check correctness, but did not have anyone to critique my code style. Maybe I'm passing all the tests but my code is ugly and could be made a lot better?

This may not be a problem in all courses, but it certainly is starting to be a problem in the higher level mathematical courses that I'm learning.

OCW is fantastic, and I hope a companion site comes up where a student can ask questions to experts (even on "simple topics" and homework problems -- which rules out MathOverflow).