COURSERA Is Such a Cool Online College

[squirrel]

https://www.coursera.org/

You would that its the https protocal since this college requires students to sign up. But make no mistake. This is an open college, a union of currently 33 universities from all over the world. You need to sign up and enrol in the course you want to take, so that your instructor(s) can track your progress, as if you are admitted in a real world college. Your commitment is exclusively to yourself. You need to keep track of your own progress so that you really achieve the goal of the course as set by its instructor.

Hey I see one of the member university is from my country, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I studied there, quite an unfriendly campus I regret to say, students and faculty members are very competitive and therefore sometimes can be very hostile to the others, typical Hong Kongers they are, but it is undeniably is a prestigious college especially in science and technology.

[frightlever]

King Kong college is a lot friendlier, though the campus can be bananas.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Like most of these online university things, there's almost nothing on history. Disappointing.

Even MIT OpenCourseWare, which has an impressive list of history classes, has virtually no content for those classes. They're just a list of books to buy and read.

[Nalano]

Even MIT OpenCourseWare, which has an impressive list of history classes, has virtually no content for those classes. They're just a list of books to buy and read.

Which draws the inevitable question: Why not just buy the fucking books and skip the non-credit class?

[squirrel]

Which draws the inevitable question: Why not just buy the fucking books and skip the non-credit class?

You do know how much is for a typical college textbook?

Those are professors from prestigious institutes. They spend effort in this project for good reasons. But except that, yep, you can study by reading and doing exercises yourself, especially in well developed subjects like mathematics.

The courses offered by free virtual institutes are not comparable with real world institutes (even for courses that do not require laboratory). This is just the very very first step for sharing knowledge. The start of everything.

For the course I took, just for the very first class I already run into serious problem and is looking for guidance. Sometimes you just need help in learning.

You may, of course, get some "happy version" of digitalized textbooks. But admin may not be "happy" if I reveal locations of those "happy version" here. Anyway you can easily search for them I am sure.

[Nalano]

You do know how much is for a typical college textbook?

Yes, since I went to college.

And I didn't go to college for the textbooks. I went for the attention of the professors, teaching assistance and classmates... which is exactly what you don't get from e-learning.

[Xercies]

And I didn't go to college for the textbooks. I went for the attention of the professors, teaching assistance and classmates... which is exactly what you don't get from e-learning.

This!

E-learning is fine but having professors push you in the right direction, and the students doing the same is invaluable I think. also I kind of prefer a guy up there saying all this stuff then a bunch of text, the guy can be funny, informative and inspiring and a bunch of text can well be a bunch of text.

[Alex Bakke]

Different strokes for different folks.

I'm doing two AS levels through www.nec.ac.uk at the moment, and it's pretty fantastic. The course materials are great, I've got a tutor for each subject that marks each assignment, asks how I'm doing etc.

[squirrel]

Like most of these online university things, there's almost nothing on history. Disappointing

I guess the reason is that History is a subject with low entry barrier. Anyone can easily pick up a topic one want to pursue, and read tons of related books / texts from web. But of course, reading history and studying History is completely two different things. I am interested in history and read many as well, just like a lot of people here, but I know well to myself I am not qualified to perform a credible study on a given topic. If I am required to, I am probably gonna summarize related studies from the others and that is.

I'm doing two AS levels through www.nec.ac.uk at the moment, and it's pretty fantastic. The course materials are great, I've got a tutor for each subject that marks each assignment, asks how I'm doing etc.

Hey, none of tutor schools here for public exams operate in this manner, but I guess they should have, sounds very cost effective one.

[ronniew]

I am currently working my way to completing my first coursera course and likewise wanted to hold off on a detailed assessment until completed. As the power and potential of coursera appears less as a “fix” for higher education but in other areas. I had not thought of the online college student angle, but that certainly makes a great deal of sense. I too was quite impressed with the number of coursera participants outside the U.S. Coursera seems a potential poster child of globalization.