MOOC is an acronym that stands for ‘massively-open online
course’ and in recent days it’s become an important word to me.
As a part of my effort to grow and develop professionally as
I look towards graduate school in the near future, I want to make sure that I’m
not just coming home from work every day and planting in front of the TV and
watching old Sci-fi reruns- I mean, I did that on Saturday, but I think it’s
okay every once in a while.
A friend tipped me off to Coursera.com, a website that offers
free online courses run by actual professors at some of the top universities in
the US and Canada. A big frustration of mine in recent years is that although I
wanted to learn how to program and there is a ton of information on the web
available for me, it’s hard to jump into such an intimidating and ‘big’ field
without clear structure or guidance. At my friend’s advice, I surfed around
Coursera and found an intro to logical programming and signed up for the course
to begin on June 3rd.
As someone that has never taken an online course before, I
was a little unsure about it, especially since these classes had the ‘MO’-
massively open- attached to the front. An introductory video mentioned that
there would be thousands and thousands of students in some of the classes on
the website and I felt like I’d probably abandon things after a day or two. I
felt like the class materials would probably be subpar and shoddy and that I
wouldn’t gain much from the class.
But to my pleasant surprise, I was wildly incorrect. Each
class comes with a wide variety of video lectures to be watched each week along
with practice and homework exercises, typically followed by a quiz each week to
check in progress. A lot of the lectures are made by the professors themselves
and actually quite engaging- much better than many of the instructors I had in
classes that I myself attended in college. I actually look forward to some of
them.
So in addition to the programming course, I decided to sign
up for a few more classes- one on the history and development of the internet
to help me understand modern telecommunications better, an introduction to
Finance course since I don’t really understand business or money, a course on
Models and Model Theory to help my understanding of the world and as a
potential aide in data analysis, and the programming course. I’m learning
straight from professors at universities like the University of Michigan,
University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto- all fantastic
schools.
It’s four courses and each expects between 5-7 hours of work
a week and it’s thus far been a great way to spend my after-work-hours doing
something both interesting and productive. I may not be a student, but I’m
really thankful for the learning opportunities that our modern world can
provide to those who are interested.
So suffice to say, it’s been nice to keep busy J
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