INTRODUCTION
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This blog is based on an article by Ki Mae
Heussner(1)
The Expert
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The tips are from MOOCs expert, Feynman Liang, a
"21-year-old ... pursuing a dual-degree program in engineering and
biophysics from Dartmouth and Amherst"
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He has "also completed 36 massive open
online courses (MOOCs) on Coursera, Udacity and edX"
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He took "10 courses simultaneously while completing
a summer internship at Google. When his friends go out for Thursday night
parties, he often stayed back to complete Coursera assignments due the next
day. On occasion, he spent 80 hours on a
single assignment. But he said the MOOCs have helped him pass lower-level classes in college and even prepped
him for his Google interviews,
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Liang was one of Coursera’s ‘top 50’ students
based on the number of courses he has completed(2)
MOOCs
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Massive, Open,
Online Courses (MOOCs) have attracted all kinds of interest from people inside
and outside education. The major MOOC
startups have teamed up with dozens of top-notch schools around the world for
classes in a range of disciplines,
·
Despite the buzz, student drop-out rates are still
very high. Some estimates say that as
many as 90 percent of online students never finish the classes they enroll in.
LIANG'S TIPS
FOR SELECTING THE BEST CLASSES
1. It’s not just about the certificates
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You don’t need a certificate or official
recognition for what you take away from the class to be useful to you in other
areas of your life,
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Liang took a class on algorithms and data
structures with a top Princeton professor that did not offer certificates of
any kind. However, when he walked into his technical interviews for a summer
internships, he realized that “being in that class gave him the answers to the
questions being asked in the interview.”
2. Don’t judge a course by its videos
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Excellent online courses may offer highly
produced videos with graphics, animations and artfully shot sequences or they
may just have a professor in front of a camera,
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But don’t dismiss a whole course just because
the videos don’t seem up to par. An electrical engineering course Liang took on
Coursera didn’t have great videos, but it was one of the best classes he’s
taken online,
·
To evaluate a class early on, test it out for a
couple of weeks to get a sense of the professor’s personality and commitment
level. Assignments and quizzes that just
ask you to recall material covered in the video might indicate the professor is
just doing the online course because of a university initiative, not a real
personal interest. More
thought-provoking questions and problem sets could show the teacher's investment.
3. Be prepared to complain about peer grading
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Liang isn’t excited about Coursera's peer review
process. In a class of 30,000 the students depend on peer grading to get
feedback on papers and assignments that don’t lend themselves to automatic
computer grading. Students train using a grading rubric and then they are asked
to evaluate a certain number of their peers’ work,
·
The problem is the huge variables in the
feedback. Some students may be Ph.Ds in the topic of the course, while others
may be high-school students or non-native English speakers with limited vocabularies,
·
The upside is you get a chance to interact with
people from all kinds of backgrounds.
4. Don’t play it safe when you pick classes
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In a competitive college environment, where
every final grade ends up on a transcript, students may be reluctant to branch
out beyond the courses they know they’ll do well in,
·
However, on Coursera, students are free to delve
into social psychology, behavioral economics, climate science and other topics,
without worrying about the outcome. The student can indulge in their curiosity.
The student can learn topics ranging from the history of humankind to the
history of rock, all from the comfort of your their home. Also, if the student
would like, they can ask unintelligent questions or test out half-baked
theories anonymously.
5. Don’t assume there’s consistency between classes
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As Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng has said, his
startup isn’t a university , it’s “a humble hosting platform.” That means the
professors and schools design the curriculum, create the content and set the
class requirements,
·
Coursera obviously sets the framework and
provides support, but its classes run the gamut in terms of quality. Once
you’ve registered for a class, pay attention to its assignment policies. Some
classes may not ask you to submit anything until the very end of the course. Others will fail you if you miss more than 30
percent of a week's assignments,
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Also, a lot of professors are trying out course
content for the first time. Be prepared
to feel a bit like a guinea pig as policies shift do to the professors learning
what works.
6. If you take just one class, make it this one
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Potential Courserians obviously have a huge
range of interests and motivations, and there’s never going to be just one course that fits everyone's interests,
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But, of the more than 50 classes Liang has taken,
the course he would most recommend to a
MOOC newcomer is“A beginner’s guide to
irrational behavior.” This class (taught
by a professor of behavioral economics and psychology from Duke), touches on
all kinds of lessons regarding human nature. “It’s one of the more accessible
and rock-your-world classes.”
CONCLUSION
To start selecting your first (or next) MOOC, please click here.
REFERENCES
(1)
https://gigaom.com/2013/08/09/how-to-pick-the-best-mooc-6-tips-from-a-coursera-junkie/
(2)
https://blog.coursera.org/30-coursera-classes-and-a-google-internship/
