This week, I have completed week 3 and part of week 4 of Introduction to Public Speaking on Coursera and hour 3 and part of hour 4 of The Ancient Greek Hero on EdX. In addition, I've been continue working as a World TA for Software as a Service on EdX.
In week 3 of Introduction to Public Speaking, we have wrapped up the units on impromptu speech, a short three-to-six minute speech, with a peer review assignment. In week 4, we are starting new units on informative speech, a five-to-ten minute speech to inform the audiences on certain topic, with an overview of basic techniques of delivering informative speech. Although deadlines for a couple of assignments have passed, it is not too late to register for this course as this is one of the courses where there will be no statement of achievement and the course materials will be available after the course has completed.
For hour 3 and hour 4 of The Ancient Greek Hero, we studied the concept of sorrows and lamentation in Greek song culture, and what part it plays in Iliad. I am actually quite behind on this one as hour 23 of 24 has been already released. However, the course will not be completed until Aug. 11 and course materials will be available after the course has been completed. Again, it is not too late for those who are interested.
As for Software as a Service, we have just completed the week 2 of this fantastic introductory course on Software engineering. In week 2, it covered the basics of Ruby programming language. For those interested in obtaining certificate from this course, only the deadline for diagnostic quiz has been passed and there are plenty of quizzes and assignments for you to pass the course.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
About This Blog
Having taken MOOCs (Massively-offered Online Courses) courses almost from the launch of Udacity, I have had wonderful time taking various free courses from great professors from various institutions. Not only these courses allowed me some refreshers on the courses I had taken many years ago, it afforded me to take courses on topics that I had always been interested in, yet wasn't able to take while I was in the University due to course load and financial reason. I wish these were available when I was High school or even in the first few years of my undergraduate degree as it would have helped enormously in my study.
One thing I had missed in my early days was a vibrant local MOOCs community to share the experience taking these courses and to encourage one another to keep up with these courses. Some of the Meetup groups in my local community (Halifax, Nova Scotia) never really took off the ground, and I didn't find too many online communities back in those early days. This lack of communal experience had been initial motivator to start this blog. Although there are now many vibrant online MOOCs communities on Google Plus, Skype, Facebook, and other SNS, as well as numerous blog, I think having another blog sharing one's experience with MOOCs couldn't hurt. To that end, let me state what I intend to post on this blog. On this space, I hope to provide reviews of the courses I have taken and will have taken, weekly updates on the current courses I am taking, and some of the works resulting from the completed courses.
I hope some of these courses can be helpful for those discerning take courses from these MOOCs platform, as well as providing helps to those taking the courses discussed in this blog.
For this conclude this first post by providing very brief overview of some of the MOOCs platforms I have used in the past.
As mentioned in the beginning, one of the MOOCs platform I have used in Udacity. It was founded by Sebastian Thrun of self-driving car and Google X fame. The courses are mostly on Computer Science (or one may argue that it is more accurately on Mathematical Sciences), but they have started offering courses on other Science disciplines, such as Physics and Psychology. None of the courses have due date, so you can go on your on pace, which I find to be a huge advantage but others may wish there were due dates to keep them motivated, and I believe it has the best user interface of all the MOOCs platform. Recently, they have announced offering of Master's degree in partnership with Georgia Tech.
The two platforms I have been using more frequently lately are Coursera and EdX. Coursera was founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, professors at Stanford, whereas EdX was started out as a partnership between MIT and Harvard. These two platforms are very similar in that they both cover wider range of disciplines and all their courses have due dates (primary reason I have been using them more frequently than Udacity lately) although Coursera have started non-certificate offering self paced version of some of the courses. One of the main advantage of Coursera is that it offers by far the most number of courses than any other university-level MOOCs platform, although the number of offerings on EdX is fast growing. I do find the courses EdX offers much cleaner and easier to use user interface, but I find that it is much easier to search for course in Coursera than EdX.
Finally, I would like to make a brief mention of Khan Academy, Codecademy, and iTunes U. Unlike Udacity, Coursera, and EdX, all of which focuses on offering the university-level courses, Khan Academy and Codecademy is intended for much more of general audiences. Founded by Salman Khan as a non-profit organization, Khan Academy materials consist of short lecture videos and quizzes that are tied not to specific courses, but to specific skills. Codecademy is a kind of online-based IDE (interactive development environment) and online tutorial platform for people to learn how to program. Much of the lessons on Codecademy is fairly simple and even those with no previous programming experience shouldn't have problem following those. Although, it may technically considered a MOOCs in that it can only accessed through Apple's own app, iTunes U is an iOS app where you can access some of the university lectures for free.
One thing I had missed in my early days was a vibrant local MOOCs community to share the experience taking these courses and to encourage one another to keep up with these courses. Some of the Meetup groups in my local community (Halifax, Nova Scotia) never really took off the ground, and I didn't find too many online communities back in those early days. This lack of communal experience had been initial motivator to start this blog. Although there are now many vibrant online MOOCs communities on Google Plus, Skype, Facebook, and other SNS, as well as numerous blog, I think having another blog sharing one's experience with MOOCs couldn't hurt. To that end, let me state what I intend to post on this blog. On this space, I hope to provide reviews of the courses I have taken and will have taken, weekly updates on the current courses I am taking, and some of the works resulting from the completed courses.
I hope some of these courses can be helpful for those discerning take courses from these MOOCs platform, as well as providing helps to those taking the courses discussed in this blog.
For this conclude this first post by providing very brief overview of some of the MOOCs platforms I have used in the past.
As mentioned in the beginning, one of the MOOCs platform I have used in Udacity. It was founded by Sebastian Thrun of self-driving car and Google X fame. The courses are mostly on Computer Science (or one may argue that it is more accurately on Mathematical Sciences), but they have started offering courses on other Science disciplines, such as Physics and Psychology. None of the courses have due date, so you can go on your on pace, which I find to be a huge advantage but others may wish there were due dates to keep them motivated, and I believe it has the best user interface of all the MOOCs platform. Recently, they have announced offering of Master's degree in partnership with Georgia Tech.
The two platforms I have been using more frequently lately are Coursera and EdX. Coursera was founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, professors at Stanford, whereas EdX was started out as a partnership between MIT and Harvard. These two platforms are very similar in that they both cover wider range of disciplines and all their courses have due dates (primary reason I have been using them more frequently than Udacity lately) although Coursera have started non-certificate offering self paced version of some of the courses. One of the main advantage of Coursera is that it offers by far the most number of courses than any other university-level MOOCs platform, although the number of offerings on EdX is fast growing. I do find the courses EdX offers much cleaner and easier to use user interface, but I find that it is much easier to search for course in Coursera than EdX.
Finally, I would like to make a brief mention of Khan Academy, Codecademy, and iTunes U. Unlike Udacity, Coursera, and EdX, all of which focuses on offering the university-level courses, Khan Academy and Codecademy is intended for much more of general audiences. Founded by Salman Khan as a non-profit organization, Khan Academy materials consist of short lecture videos and quizzes that are tied not to specific courses, but to specific skills. Codecademy is a kind of online-based IDE (interactive development environment) and online tutorial platform for people to learn how to program. Much of the lessons on Codecademy is fairly simple and even those with no previous programming experience shouldn't have problem following those. Although, it may technically considered a MOOCs in that it can only accessed through Apple's own app, iTunes U is an iOS app where you can access some of the university lectures for free.
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