

Edx Announced 7 Free Courses - md8
https://www.edx.org/

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dhawalhs
Just added these to the list on Class Central(<http://www.class-central.com>).
With these and the addition of new Coursera courses last week, the single page
site has grown really long.

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lix2333
Hey, great site. Looks like you and me were thinking along the same lines.

<http://www.noexcuselist.com>

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dysoco
What would you choose ? MIT's 6.00x or Hardvard's CS50x ? MIT's one looks more
mathematical oriented, and probably a bit more difficult but better quality
(I've seen some of the Python videos of MIT's OpenCourseWare)

CS50 looks more "fast paced" as it teaches you several paradigms, but I'd
rather learn more C than Python.

I can't make up my mind. I've programmed a bit, in Python, C and now a bit of
C++ (Also a bit of Haskell) but I never took any kind of classes nor studied
things like Algorithms or Data Structures in deep.

What would you choose ?

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objclxt
CS50 doesn't just do C - it's more of a 'survey' through the CS landscape.
Students start off with Scratch before diving into C, and take detours into
PHP, JavaScript, as well as HTML.

It's a very popular course, and the majority of students are taking it as an
elective. It doesn't go into particular depth with regards to algorithms or
data structures, so if you're looking to learn more than just the basics
(binary search, trees, etc) it probably isn't for you. It has a good
reputation on-campus, and is one of the most popular classes. It's also
already got an established distance education component, which is one reason
why it's being offered as one of the first edX courses.

I have only taken CS50, so I wouldn't want to comment on MIT's offering, but
hopefully that will help you out! If anyone had any questions about the course
I can try and answer them - the course hasn't changed substantially since I
took it.

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anusinha
At MIT, 6.00 is an introductory course. Most EECS majors do not take it. It's
intended for people interested in EECS but who do not have much prior
experience. It is in no way an easy course though---it's fast paced and covers
a large amount of material. The only thing "introductory" is the minimal
background assumed.

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dfriedmn
Berkeley's presence on both coursera and EdX is an interesting wrinkle --
they've got a quote in another article suggesting they can't control where
their professors to decide to put their content: “Ultimately, our faculty will
decide where they want to put courses up online, but we find that edX has
values and methodologies very closely aligned with ours at Berkeley, so our
institutional preference would be to use edX,” said Robert J. Birgeneau, the
chancellor of Berkeley.

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nicklovescode
I was a bit surprised to see Berkeley as well. It was pitched as such a MIT &
Harvard collaboration that I didn't get the sense other schools would be
involved this early on. I'm glad they are offering classes here too though,
EdX seems much more quality vs quantity.

edit: woah, Dan!

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lunchladydoris
I really hate it when the post titles are changed but in this case it's
justified -- this is edX not MITx.

I like that, as with the recent Caltech machine learning course, these courses
look like they will really push people.

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md8
Edited.

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beberlei
Too much focus on Computer Science in my opinion. Udacity already covers CS in
detail. The only interesting bit is the introductory chemics course, a focus
on physics, chemics, biology and engineering could have set edx apart from
udacity.

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anusinha
A lot of the computer science classes already have a lot of material in a
ready to go digital format so it's easier to get them online. The others will
follow, but it's harder to convert all the material from a "brick and mortar"
class to a digital class of the same quality. There also might be a perceived
need or demand for computer science classes.

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tikhonj
I took CS188 (the AI course) recently and it was really great. Dan Klein is
easily one of the favorite CS professors among the students--everyone really
loves his class. He is, critically, a great _educator_. And, naturally, great
fun. The lectures were certainly fun to attend even when the material was
relatively easy.

The online version only has half the material. However, this makes sense; the
class is naturally divided into two parts. The first half was focused more on
AI and search problems and the second part was more about machine learning. I
suspect the only reason it is one class is because it has to fit in the
semester system. Online, naturally, it's liberated from this constraint.

Anyhow, I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in AI. And even if
you're not interested in the field as much, it's a fun course and only lasts
three months.

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munchor
Hey guys!

I don't really get the difference between these two:
<https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/6.00x/2012_Fall/about>
<https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/CS50x/2012/about>

Any ideas?

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dysoco
Look a couple of posts above.

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salsayarroz
I am confused, why is saas here, the same course is offered at coursera

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Toshio
Berkeley is probably hedging their bets; they most likely expect Coursera to
become more restrictive down the road - no other reason would make sense.

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eupharis
To expand on that, the for-profit Coursera seems like a great partner for
universities at the moment, but in the future, if they become a force, a
platform with millions of students, their profit interest and the
universities' interests could begin to diverge.

Hopefully, the various platforms (Coursera, edX, Udacity) play nice together,
i.e., it's only a small amount of work to setup the same course content on a
new platform.

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gwillen
> Hopefully, the various platforms (Coursera, edX, Udacity) play nice
> together, i.e., it's only a small amount of work to setup the same course
> content on a new platform.

As Google SREs say: Hope is not a strategy.

(Especially when you're hoping against the economic interests of the players
involved.)

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duck
Love how the picture on that site shows a guy wearing a Georgia Tech shirt at
MIT. :)

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timtamboy63
Which guy?

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idontlikebacon
Anyone know when the actual platform will be open sourced?

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dkroy
Beautiful UI, I love it!

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dfc
The course images are almost impossible to read on the blackberry.

