Back at the start of this year I posted about the free debut online course from MitX: Electrical Engineering. I started in on it, got bogged down a bit, and ultimately stopped paying attention to it. The bottom line was that while I found it interesting enough it didn't really seem to be going anywhere useful for me. I didn't really have the prereq knowledge and ended up in a position where I'd need to do a lot of catch-up work in order to keep up with stuff I didn't really care about. And I'd have rather played League of Legends anyway.
Regardless of how I did it seems the trial course actually worked out well for them. So much so that more US Universities have joined in and formed a coalition of sorts: edX. I'd stopped paying attention, though I believe they've run at least one semester since the trial. It looks like this coming online semester will at least have courses from MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. I just got an email (presumably harvested from the EE course I started) urging me to check out these courses and to spread the word about them.
Well, while EE was only a minor interest of mine there are actually two courses this time around that I'm really interested in. Heck, reading my old post I even wrote that the sort of courses I would want to take started with 'statistical modeling and quantum physics'. Well, the courses this time around include an intro stats course and an intro quantum computing course. I feel like I'm probably beyond an intro course in either subject but it has been many years since I was a student myself so it can't hurt. And hopefully this time around the topics are interesting enough to actually prompt me into finishing the courses!
At any rate, it's a free service and all they asked in return was to tell my friends about the course offerings. Well, considering yourselves told. And if you happen to have an interest in stats or quantum physics we can be online classmates! Woo?
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
MITx
Today's post is only tangentially related to gaming but I think it could really interest some people who may be reading. (I found out about this program from an article linked on Facebook by Mike Turian and I wouldn't know him if not for my Planeswalker Points posts a few months ago.) The program is called MITx and the basic idea is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is planning on putting out free online versions of some of their courses. There will be video clips from lectures, excerpts from text books, and automatically marked assignments and exams. Passing the course won't get you any closer to a degree but can get you a certification stating you took the course and passed.
Personally I miss being in school. I was never really big on actually attending class since I've found I learn best from books and have a real aversion to talking to people so I never really asked questions in classes anyway. I like actually being in a course though. Having someone who knows something plan out what they think is important to learn is useful. Knowing what book to read, and what sections are important, and having a schedule to get it done are all really important.
I've often thought about taking night/weekend classes somewhere and regularly browse the 'continuing education' things that come in the mail from various Toronto based universities but I've never found a course I was actually interested in taking. I hated electives/'bird courses' when I was in school and the continuing education stuff all seems to be even simpler than those or are business courses which don't really appeal to me. It makes me think what sort of course I would want to take... Statistical modeling, quantum physics, psychology, robotics...
It turns out MITx is launching it's pilot class on the 5th of March. They're starting with 6.002X which is one of the starting electrical engineering courses. Maybe not my first choice but certainly something interesting. They make it sound complicated with all kinds of US based prerequisites. Part of me worries that I don't know enough about magnetism to follow along. Part of me worries that I already know everything covered in the course from CS256 and the electronics class I took in high school. But CS256 was one of my favourite classes and I hope if the pilot is a success they'll bring further courses along this chain to the program later. I'm pretty psyched about the class. I've already enrolled and am considering buying the textbook to more easily follow along. And since it's free and there's no penalty for failure I figure it can't hurt to sign up and give it a shot.
Sound interesting? Check out the webpage and enrol before it starts next week!
Personally I miss being in school. I was never really big on actually attending class since I've found I learn best from books and have a real aversion to talking to people so I never really asked questions in classes anyway. I like actually being in a course though. Having someone who knows something plan out what they think is important to learn is useful. Knowing what book to read, and what sections are important, and having a schedule to get it done are all really important.
I've often thought about taking night/weekend classes somewhere and regularly browse the 'continuing education' things that come in the mail from various Toronto based universities but I've never found a course I was actually interested in taking. I hated electives/'bird courses' when I was in school and the continuing education stuff all seems to be even simpler than those or are business courses which don't really appeal to me. It makes me think what sort of course I would want to take... Statistical modeling, quantum physics, psychology, robotics...
It turns out MITx is launching it's pilot class on the 5th of March. They're starting with 6.002X which is one of the starting electrical engineering courses. Maybe not my first choice but certainly something interesting. They make it sound complicated with all kinds of US based prerequisites. Part of me worries that I don't know enough about magnetism to follow along. Part of me worries that I already know everything covered in the course from CS256 and the electronics class I took in high school. But CS256 was one of my favourite classes and I hope if the pilot is a success they'll bring further courses along this chain to the program later. I'm pretty psyched about the class. I've already enrolled and am considering buying the textbook to more easily follow along. And since it's free and there's no penalty for failure I figure it can't hurt to sign up and give it a shot.
Sound interesting? Check out the webpage and enrol before it starts next week!
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