
List of 600 free online courses launched by 190 universities - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1437623/600-free-online-courses-you-can-take-from-universities-worldwide/
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hawktheslayer
As someone who enjoys learning this is really enticing to me. However with the
demands of my busy work/life schedule, my increasingly challenged attention
span--mainly due to the number of competing free resources out there--and my
wide range of curiosities I have difficulty deciding where to dedicate my
precious time to. Do other people fall in a similar boat? If so any tips or
tricks to break through?

~~~
scarecrowbob
I tend to make a certain amount of time for something consistent every day
(like, usually about 30 min on Khan for the last 6 months trying to level up
my math skills) and then a certain amount of time for random playtime (like my
safari books only subscription) where I just do whatever I feel like doing for
that time.

My life got a lot better when I just committed to doing certain things every
day (yoga and making my bed, for instance). So I just added "study" to those
things.

Another pro tip-- have kids when you're 23... I'm 40 and now they are mostly
grown so I have a lot of free time LOL An hour of yoga a day is a lot less of
a commitment than it would have been when I was 28, had two small kids, and
was in grad school.

That's a joke, but the kernel of truth in it is: you don't have to learn
everything now. With luck you will live to be 70+ years old and so the benefit
of even 15-20 a day of study really adds up over several decades.

~~~
elymar
What strategy are you using to "level up" with Khan? I'm curious because I'd
like to do this as well but am not sure where to focus.

~~~
scarecrowbob
Well, I just started with the Algebra II classes cause that's about where my
math skills were at... I've had calc I and discrete math in college, plus a
lot of formal logic training but that was a long time ago.

I was doing the "mission" style where they give you almost random tasks, and
then you do mastery challenges... I feel like that got me a good into
understanding a bunch of trig, matrix, and vector things that I hadn't
understood before.

However, I just wrapped up my precalc with that and decided to move on because
the last couple of topics were boring and they kept sending me mastery
challenges of tedious stuff.

So for the calc I switched from the missions style to the lesson style because
it feels more directed and "completist", and I've just been doing lectures and
exercises. In the last couple of days I've gotten about half way through the
material on limits.

When I finish the calc, then I will do the statistics, and the multivariate
calculus. At that point, I think that I will be ready to move into college
level classes online for linear and whatever else I think I want.

My larger interests are on one hand machine learning and AI and on the other
hand, audio electronics for music... my math skills have held me back in
electronics and I feel like if I am going to find anything useful in applying

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rb808
So this is just a list of the courses on edX and coursera, via description
pages on course-central.com, listed line by line on qz.com. Presumably people
get paid for every click, rather than just look at the original sites.

The modern web sucks.

~~~
avinassh
and they all link to course central pages, rather than directly to the
courses. so that now course central gets clicks, cookies will be saved for ads
and tracking. Plus, they use another site for redirection, possibly for
affiliate sales and even more tracking.

The items in list are just added, randomly. For example, Machine Learning with
Python: from Linear Models to Deep Learning [0] course actullay starts on June
2019. It's not really 'launched'.

[0] - [https://www.edx.org/course/machine-learning-with-python-
from...](https://www.edx.org/course/machine-learning-with-python-from-linear-
models-to-deep-learning)

~~~
rb808
There are a bunch in French too, handy.

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jatsign
Why do so many sites have UX like this one, where after you start reading, the
text gets grayed out and you have to click a button "Read Full Story"? It's
annoying to the user - if I want to read more, just let me scroll.

It can't save that much bandwidth to send just part of the story. Is it to
measure user engagement?

~~~
anonymous5133
Only reason I could see it being done is to improve loading time. Most users
these days will bounce back if the page takes more than few seconds to load.

~~~
QuotedForTruth
I always figured it was something about ad views. Seems you could charge more
for an ad view right after that break than if the break didnt exist. You've
now confirmed that user is actively reading and will actually see the ad.

But maybe ads are click based anyways?

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javinpaul
If anyone is interested, here is some more list for free programming courses

[https://hackernoon.com/5-free-r-programming-courses-for-
data...](https://hackernoon.com/5-free-r-programming-courses-for-data-
scientists-and-ml-programmers-5732cb9e10)

[https://hackernoon.com/10-free-courses-to-learn-docker-
for-p...](https://hackernoon.com/10-free-courses-to-learn-docker-for-
programmers-and-devops-engineers-7ff2781fd6e0)

[http://www.java67.com/2018/02/5-free-python-online-
courses-f...](http://www.java67.com/2018/02/5-free-python-online-courses-for-
beginners.html)

[https://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2018/01/5-free-git-
course...](https://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2018/01/5-free-git-courses-for-
programmers-to-learn-online.html)

[http://www.java67.com/2018/01/top-5-free-angular-js-
online-c...](http://www.java67.com/2018/01/top-5-free-angular-js-online-
courses-for-web-developers.html)

I have also shared a lot of curated list of free resources, which you can find
on my blog
[http://javarevisited.blogspot.com](http://javarevisited.blogspot.com)

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tim333
Some should do degree accreditation based on online learning to give people a
lower cost option.

~~~
gmiller123456
Or... There should be less emphasis on whether or not someone has a degree,
and more emphasis on what they can actually do.

~~~
onemoresoop
True. Usually a degree these days has inflated value, but it says something
though, and that's fact that one has made an effort at finishing something.

~~~
sound1
Thank you fir this great comment! Made my day :-)

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bnt
Wait, isn’t this list a ripoff from freeCodeCamp?

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wltprgm
He is actually that guy who compiled this list, I don't know why every month
freeCodeCamp founder shared his article on the Facebook page

~~~
bnt
Ah, I didn't do my due diligence before commenting.

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stephengillie
There is no such thing as a free lunch. How much of tuition, endowment, tax,
and other funds paid for these?

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docbrown
If i’m not mistaken—using MIT’s OWC as an example—these courses are basically
carbon copies of lectures they give their students. The instructors are still
teaching on the campus to IRL students. The only difference is that these are
then put online for easy access a la open source projects.

So, to answer your question, the money spent to produce online (o) lectures is
equal to campus (c) lectures—without taking into labor hours to upload and
edit. Therefore, O + C = $T.

~~~
pkaye
Also I think MIT OWC did some fund raising through donations and grants to pay
for the online lectures.

