What MOOC Are You Currently Taking?

[sengsational]

The set of Massive Open Online Courses is a resource that is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Many of the members here have taken advantage of these courses. A quick search shows references to many Coursera courses[1], for instance.

I know it's impossible to control the direction of a thread on this board, but the idea is for people to publish what course they are starting so that they have that little bit more motivation to report back when they finished (or, hat in hand, dropped out, which is too easy to do).

So the thread idea is not really for "ooh wouldn't this course be interesting"...not unless you signed-up and are publicly committed to taking the course.

[1]
Einstein and Special Relativity http://www.early-retirement.org/for...cus-on-the-afterlife-75775-3.html#post1555533
Android 101 http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/apps-catching-up-69712.html#post1391975
Android Development http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/mysql-and-free-databases-75904.html#post1556806
Living with Dementia: Impact on Individuals, Caregivers, Communities and Societies http://www.early-retirement.org/for...s-living-with-dementia-74894.html#post1528875
"a great history course" http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/moocs-college-courses-for-free-64898.html#post1278840
Intro to Astronomy http://www.early-retirement.org/for...ancial-planning-course-64046.html#post1259631
"Dan Ariely course (behavioral economics?) http://www.early-retirement.org/for...ancial-planning-course-64046.html#post1257723

 

[sengsational]

Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1

I started the Coursera course "Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1" today. There was another programming course in Scala (a functional language), that I dropped out of. I plan to come back to this thread and report either that I dropped out or finished the course. I'm hoping the shame of admiting that I dropped out will motivate me to keep plugging away at the course.

My reason for taking the course is that I have an idea for a "stupid" Android application that will never make any money, but would be fun for me to do. So not to increase my marketability as a programmer (I'm retired, after all).

 

[robertf57]

Just started a php programming course on Coursera. This is week 0. The videos for this week are trivial as was the quiz and programming assignment

 

[Meadbh]

Last Fall I completed two MOOCs on Future Learn:

Irish Lives in War and Revolution: Exploring Ireland's History 1912-1923

and

Start Writing Fiction

The history course was excellent and thought provoking, with a huge amount of archival links that can still be accessed. The writing course was, I felt, somewhat basic. Both were free.

 

[athena53]

I'm in the middle of "Financial Markets" with Dr. Robert Schiller at Yale. I've been very good about watching one session every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but took off today because I'm trying to get a bathroom floor tiling project done before DS and DDIL arrive the week after next. (Toilets have been removed from both upstairs bathrooms, including the one off the guest BR so it's a little inconvenient right now!).


I always take away something interesting form each session; from the references he makes in his class, the paying students appear to have a very long reading list. Schiller himself is interesting- manages to look rumpled even with a (probably) expensive haircut, and not the most polished speaker, but clearly a great thinker.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

I am watching Optimizing Brain Fitness from the Teaching Company.

 

[robertf57]

Just started a php programming course on Coursera. This is week 0. The videos for this week are trivial as was the quiz and programming assignment

oops! it's a Python course, not php. Sorry if I confused anyone.

 

[aaronc879]

I tried a course last fall and quickly found out it was for smart people. Everything just went way over my head and I dropped out. At least it was free.

 

[Samz]

The Science of Happiness

I'm currently taking "The Science of Happiness" on EdX. It is self paced which is helpful since I'm not yet a full ER-er yet. I just took the Mid-Term and got a 70...right in line with my performance back in college .

Minimum to pass is a 60 (out of UC Berkeley...maybe more laid back / relaxed than other schools??). I am taking notes and really trying to adsorb everything and I'm a little bummed out I did not do better on the mid term...

I did look up the "Start Writing Fiction" one (mentioned earlier in this string) and may try that one too.

 

[RunningBum]

I started the Coursera course "Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1" today. There was another programming course in Scala (a functional language), that I dropped out of. I plan to come back to this thread and report either that I dropped out or finished the course. I'm hoping the shame of admiting that I dropped out will motivate me to keep plugging away at the course.

My reason for taking the course is that I have an idea for a "stupid" Android application that will never make any money, but would be fun for me to do. So not to increase my marketability as a programmer (I'm retired, after all).

I enrolled in the same course, in January. I had the same motivation, though I didn't have a specific app in mind. I just thought it would be fun to see what I could do and then write some apps of interest to me.

I had a lot of problems trying to set up the development environment. I was a coder in real life too, mostly C but some C++, and I had taken a Java course but didn't do anything with it. Admittedly, I generally worked for megacorps where the environment was already set up for me, but there were so many pieces and so much confusion on which tools to use for this course. The one I downloaded, and I can't even recall it anymore, was terribly slow, like it would take minutes for the emulator to come up and do anything at all. Maybe my laptop is just too underpowered, but I didn't think so.

Finally I just decided this was the kind of frustration that I was happy to get away from when working, and I wasn't going to put myself through it again.

Just wondering what your experience was. I suspect there was just a hump I couldn't get over that many can, since to many people write apps.

 

[sengsational]

I started the Coursera course "Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1" today. There was another programming course in Scala (a functional language), that I dropped out of. I plan to come back to this thread and report either that I dropped out or finished the course. I'm hoping the shame of admiting that I dropped out will motivate me to keep plugging away at the course.

I finished the course with a 90% (only took each quiz once, like 'real life' school).

I had a lot of problems trying to set up the development environment. I was a coder in real life too, mostly C but some C++, and I had taken a Java course but didn't do anything with it. Admittedly, I generally worked for megacorps where the environment was already set up for me, but there were so many pieces and so much confusion on which tools to use for this course. The one I downloaded, and I can't even recall it anymore, was terribly slow, like it would take minutes for the emulator to come up and do anything at all. Maybe my laptop is just too underpowered, but I didn't think so.

Finally I just decided this was the kind of frustration that I was happy to get away from when working, and I wasn't going to put myself through it again.

Just wondering what your experience was. I suspect there was just a hump I couldn't get over that many can, since to many people write apps.

I had the same frustration re: slow machine, so I went out an bought a new PC (shame is a powerful motivator). It was either Eclipse or Netbeans, you had, but the problem is the Android emulator that both use...it's a pig. I thought more than once about quitting for the exact same reason...it was "too much like work", LOL!

The course wasn't really all that great. You don't learn from floundering with how to set-up the environment or trying to implement something that wasn't covered in the lecture. I like to learn in the style of the "Head First" book series; tell me exactly what I need to know to understand (but no more), then build on that. And tell me five different ways (diagrams, words, puzzles, etc). This was typical college: professor spouts off for a while, no diagrams, and not much "why", or "why" for things that don't matter to me right now, almost just like reading the API documentation. The "Head First" approach is very selective about the order in which the ideas are communicated. In this course, the lab was just thrown at you; they don't tell you how to approach the problem. They tell you how the resulting program should work and you look for "TODO" items in the code. I'm not saying I didn't learn the material, but the teaching style was last century. I'll also ding them for not sending out the grades until three or four weeks after the last lab was turned in. I guess you get what you pay for.

Anyway, it cost me the money to buy a new machine, and quite a few hours that seemed a lot like w*rk, but I got through it. I'll be careful about posting here that I'm starting another course

 

[I was misinformed]

I just found this thread and can add a report. I am at different stages
now with three courses on EdX.

1. I just competed "Visualizing Japan". This was a very easy-to-digest
discussion of some moments in 19th-early 20th century Japanese history.
It will have a kind of followon course, "Visualizing Postwar Tokyo", starting
next month which I may take too.

2. I am part way through "Introduction to Deep Earth Science, Part 1".
This is a little more challenging and not quite as enjoyable, but I am
hanging in there.

3. I will start later this week "Evolution of the Human Sociality: A Quest
for the Origin of Our Social Behavior" taught by the President of
Kyoto University who is a distinguished primatologist.

 

[sengsational]

I just found this thread and can add a report.

That's a nice selection. I'm interested in #3 especially. If the classes require more to do than just listen, you'll be busy. Let us know how it goes.

I'm going to look for an architectural drawing course, possibly.

 

[Starper]

I started machine learning, too lazy to finish

 

[tfudtuckerpucker]

I completed this course from EdX/Harvard: Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul. I didn't do all the homework, because it felt too much like actual work. The reason I took the course was to try to get a taste of such a course from an Ivy League school, and listen to Dr Nasrallah's views on the subject (she is very interesting, BTW).

Rather than a rigorous approach to learning (including writing papers and taking exams), I find myself more motivated by reading books, and listening to podcasts by the author, and reading reviews/counterpoints for that book.

 

[sengsational]

I'm going to look for an architectural drawing course, possibly.

I got reasonably good at SketchUp without taking a course...instead I just watched youtube videos. I can define framing for a fairly complicated roof now, not that I really need to know that!!

But I enrolled for "Getting started with Augmented Reality" the other day. Doesn't start until September 19, and it's 5 weeks long. I'm pretty much guaranteed not to finish the course because after 3 weeks, I'll be off the grid (traveling). But usually the courses stay open for a while after they end, or I can download the assignments from a wifi hotspot somewhere.

 

[sengsational]

^ I quit that course without finishing.

If the course were applicable, I would have re-enrolled for the next session, but it wasn't doing for me what I wanted. The course was based on kind of a goofy framework that would be a dead-end for my purposes. And it was too "cookbook" for even the concepts to translate into what I was interested in doing as an Android app.