To see what a MOOC is like, Ruth Chabay and I took the Udacity CS 101 course.
We were impressed by the course design. The description of the course said that "In about 7 weeks you will build a small search engine, even if you've never written a computer program before". This goal statement is very clear and very challenging. All through the course, new CS concepts were introduced in a way that made it clear how the concept would serve the course goal, thereby providing motivation and continuity. The "blackboard" presentations were clear, and frequently interrupted by the equivalent of "clicker" questions used in large lectures in many universities now (the students have simple handheld wireless devices to respond to multiple-choice questions). The programming language was Python, which is a particularly good choice for novices. Homework consisted of writing functions that took sample input and produced specified output. We uploaded our functions, which were run on input data unknown to us and marked correct if all the inputs produced the correct outputs. There were occasional breaks in the action to discuss questions that had been raised in a forum. The instructor, David Evans, was excellent in his presentation and choice of examples. All in all, a class act. We went through the whole course out of curiosity, and we too were occasionally challenged by extra "challenge" problems that were not required. Bruce On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Curt McNamara <curt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just curious - how many of you have actually signed up for and completed a > MOOC? > > If the answer is not yet, then consider jumping onto Scott Pages excellent > model thinking course that is just starting. > > Curt > > https://www.coursera.org/course/modelthinking > >
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