

Searchable catalog of Udacity, edX, Coursera, etc. - shliachtx
http://www.coursebuffet.com/

======
dmunoz
Looks like coursebuffet.com is going for something different with accounts and
learning path planning, but class central [0] has a very functional listing of
MOOCs. Filter by initiative or subject, and sort rows by start date or course
length. Introductory youtube video are also easily available, so you can get a
better idea of the various courses quickly.

[0] [https://www.class-central.com/](https://www.class-central.com/)

Edit: digging a bit further, course buffet has a good writeup of what they are
trying to do differently on their about page:

> We know there are other sites listing MOOC courses but they still leave it
> up to you figure out which courses are similar. That is time consuming and
> frustrating. Remember we want to make it easy to compare. That is why we
> have a CourseBuffet Classification System which we use to classify every
> course.

> No more needing to figure out which specific courses from Coursera is a near
> equivalent to a specific Udacity, Saylor, edX, etc course. One click and you
> see all your choices next to each other. We also list if a course has video,
> audio, or a textbook so you can choice based on your learning style.

I like their idea. Will be happy to see them be successful at it.

~~~
bruceb
Thanks. We like CC also. For now we are sticking to courses that would be
considered full or close to college courses.

------
bruceb
Wow just found out we were posted about on HN. (we were hoping to be a little
more ready for this then we are now)

So what are we doing? Well there are many sites that aggregate courses out
there. That is easy. What we are aiming to do is create a simple standard. You
can see what a course would roughly be if you took them at a US university.

The US doesn't have a set standard but most universities classify their
courses with similar numbering. For example business students would take
Introduction to Financial Accounting then Introduction to Managerial
Accounting. Both would usually be 200 level (2nd year) courses.

This standard also allows user to make apples to apples comparisons between
courses.

There are few errors on CourseBuffet, we are working on them. Thoughts,
criticism, comments, please share! thanks!

~~~
khet
I think this is exactly what open courseware needs. I will be cheering you on
and following your progress closely!

I am not sure if you already have this planned but I would love to see an open
curriculum or sorts. Basically a curated list of courses (that have proper
video lectures) that I can take to get a degree equivalency.

If for example I wanted to learn everything an undergraduate in business
learns at a university, I can take the courses in your list in the order you
suggest and get an equivalent education. (These courses should be recordings
of actual classes and not dumbed down short videos).

I think this curation of courses will go a long way in how open courseware is
perceived.

~~~
my_username_is_
check out Saylor.org. they're trying to build a single open education platform
that actually has self study equivalents for entire degree programs

~~~
npunt
I like what they do. I see them as a good place for taking on this type of
standards definition project, which is an activity better suited for a
foundation like Saylor than a startup.

------
npunt
This looks cool but I'll be the guy to tell you that doing this is going to be
really hard as a project, and as a company.

To decently organize different subjects you won't be able to stay at the
course level for long - too large a grain size. Maybe you can stay at
university subject and undergrad/grad distinction, but you'll quickly find
edge cases may outweigh standard cases when you define further. You're going
to have to start parsing the syllabi of individual courses, which means you're
going to have a crash-course on the subject. It'll take time, and you won't
get much faster at it in another subject. This is assuming a practical
approach rather than a more research driven approach, which would take a lot
longer.

That's the first challenge. The second challenge is that tons of colleges are
entering the fray and a LOT of courses are going to get put up soon. So the
700 courses becomes 1500 becomes 5000. You may think this is an opportunity
but its at least as much a burden. And once you classify them, they'll change,
and you'll have to update them. And you won't have access to critical feedback
loops on why they changed or their quality.

Between those two challenges you're going to have to find a sustainability
model fast. As you note, many others have started to do this, and although
they didn't do the particular feature you're talking about w/ matching
courses, there's probably a lot to learn from them. I think everyone was going
'platform!' but that involves a LOT of building audience before getting any
possible leadgen revenue.

At a much higher level, college itself is going through a pretty big rethink.
Its worth asking yourself the question: "why isn't there a standard way that
colleges organize their courses today?" (hint: its structural, not just pre-
internet). Its also worth thinking about how MOOCs are adjusting their
offerings (e.g. shorter lengths, highly multidisciplinary content, topical
content, etc), and whether or not standardizing across traditional college
schemes is today's and tomorrow's problem, not just yesterday's.

I think its worth learning a bit about library sciences (the nature of
classification), talking to MOOC instructors about their experiences, talking
to other course listing startups, & talking to colleges about how they think
about what makes a college education (or at least read what they have to say).
This probably won't require code (gasp, I say this on HN), it's more a get-
out-of-the-building problem. Code is kinda your enemy right now, it'll trick
you into thinking you're making progress.

The desire to tackle organizing it is noble, but the scope is big. There's
lots of other edtech problems out there if you're interested in the space.

And all that said, feel free to prove me wrong!

Source: a long time in edtech, a lot of time spent classifying (e.g.
edsurge.com/products), and been involved in lots of discussions with open
courseware folks about these very problems.

~~~
bruceb
First thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts it is appreciated.

The classifying is a challenge. While doing it at the course level is a pain
we think without doing this the value added is small. We have found the more
courses are classified the easier it gets. This being said the edge cases can
take a good deal of time to figure out and are frustrating.In the future we
would need someone full time just to work on this.

As for "...is today's and tomorrow's problem, not just yesterday's" This could
be the case no doubt but some revolutions take longer than initial planned. HN
readers might know about MOOCs, gamifying education with achievement badges,
etc there are a lots of people who don't, almost surprisingly so. A few months
ago we talked with a local prof who didn't know about MOOCs. Millions of
people grew up with a traditional college courses and semesters and millions
are take traditional college courses. We think that replicating (or near
enough) the current setup is easier for people to grasp. There are others who
think points/badges are the way to go. . We will have to read more about
library sciences As as you point the as MOOCs become less like regular college
courses the more our classification standard will be challenged.

I had seen edsurge before but now will have to follow it more closely.

------
ics
Note to web designers: don't enforce a minimum width on elements which are
hidden on overflow. I had no idea there was a way to sign up or login because
the links to them were not visible and there was no scroll bar and thus
dmunoz's comment didn't quite make sense.

Edit: Actually, you've got a slightly worse issue... as I resize my browser
window, as soon as it reaches ~1000 (1024?) pixels the header jumps and the
buttons disappear outright, even though they would fit on the screen just
fine. I don't really care _what_ happens to the buttons, but there is no
indication elsewhere on the page that one can make an account.

~~~
bruceb
Hey thanks for the feedback. We are working on it!

~~~
ics
Glad to hear it! As another much more minor note, the header logo on the
registration page seems to be shrunken a good 75%. It's not a problem but it
does look comically small.

See: img.logo width and max-width attributes.

------
shared4you
The website navigability sucks. Just open this page:

[http://www.coursebuffet.com/sub/computer-
science](http://www.coursebuffet.com/sub/computer-science)

Then enjoy clicking "Load More", "Load More" forever. The UI seems to be
mobile-optimized, but very bad usability on desktop. Is there are "Show All"
button instead of clicking Load More all the time?

------
paxtonab
I have felt for a long time that the MOOCs are broken because there is no
holistic learning plan; a strength of one site is a weakness of another. You
guys have fixed that. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope that your site
becomes a resource I rely on in the future. That being said, there are a few
UX issues which would greatly improve signup rate and ease of use:

1\. You should list all of the subjects on the home page not just 6 of them!!!
The only way to view classes by subject is via search. But I want to be able
to browse! Search is too much effort. Use this as an opportunity to list the
highest rated classes by each subject. Put your data to good use.

2\. The only way to browse all classes by subject is by un-checking the
subject box in a search results page, but if your browser width is over 1200px
the filter results tab becomes static and you can't see all of the subjects
and filters :(

3\. What is the main benefit of signing up? Add a CTA in between the search
box and browse courses section of the homepage. Maybe also add a screenshot of
the learning path, so I immediately know what benefit I am getting/why I
shouldn't just use your site to find courses on coursera or udacity.

4\. Have landing pages per subject with a CTA to sign up.

PS I wouldn't have taken the time to write this if I wasn't absolutely in love
with your site and what you are doing.

~~~
bruceb
First thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts.

1\. You are right. We need to add more/all to home page. 2\. This is a
problem. Clearly we need to fix this! 3\. We are working on the learning path
and want to keep it under wraps for now. But a better CTA is needed. I always
want site to provide me a good reason if I am going to give them my email
address. We don't right now. same with #4

I had posted once or twice in comments of other stories about CB but was
waiting until we got some of our site issues worked out before trying to get
on the front of HN. Well the OP decided the time is now and hey I am not
complaining.

I think you will find our offerings in the future to be much improved. Email
me coursebuffet@gmail.com and I will keep you updated and any other thoughts
would welcome.

------
MaxGabriel
Search functionality isn't very good:
[http://www.coursebuffet.com/s/machine%20learning/0/0/0](http://www.coursebuffet.com/s/machine%20learning/0/0/0)

The direct matches from the front page are much better, though those miss
courses that aren't so clearly named ('Learning from Data')

------
smagch
I've seen a similar service launching post on HN about a year ago.

CourseTalk: Reviews for Udacity, Coursera, and edX (coursetalk.org)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4640735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4640735)

I'm using coursetalk when I pick up a class. Some of reviewers are giving
really valuable feedbacks.

------
auctiontheory
This tells me that there is no Ruby/PHP/node.js equivalent to Udacity's
Python-based web-development course. Pity.

~~~
thatswrong0
Software as a Service (cs169.1x and cs169.2x) from edX is not exactly the same
but fills the Ruby void.

~~~
anishkothari
links: [https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-1x/software-
servic...](https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-1x/software-service/1136)
[https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-2x/software-
servic...](https://www.edx.org/course/berkeley/cs169-2x/software-service/1275)

------
royalghost
I am interested to know how you guys are building this database. At one point
we were thinking to provide similar service as part of
[http://www.merocampus.com](http://www.merocampus.com) We are interested to
know if there are API that you are consuming, scrapping websites or adding it
manually.

------
mandy12xx
This looks very promising. I've always had trouble with the fact that most
sites just list all courses, but there is never a stepped approach to know
what to take next and so on. And you have to try to figure it out yourself,
from all the very many courses out there. Thanks for doing this.

------
queryly
It is a great tool to discover interesting courses and it saves me a lot of
time searching. I am not sure if you are working on it, but it maybe a good
idea to allow people to subscribe subjects/classes so that they got notified
when new courses got created.

------
anuragramdasan
Tim Roughgarden's Algorithms is highly recommended!

~~~
bruceb
[http://coursebuffet.com/cb/computer-
science/295](http://coursebuffet.com/cb/computer-science/295)

Leave a review if you wouldn't mind!

------
Bsharp
Awesome website! Don't have much else to add - others will be better at
pointing out UI/UX issues - just wanted to show support!

------
ansimionescu
Has been done before [https://www.class-central.com/](https://www.class-
central.com/)

~~~
JonSkeptic
I am getting significantly more accurate results on www.coursebuffet.com than
on www.class-central.com. The latter doesn't seem to have as good keyword
search and it often seems to miss even when the word is in the title of the
course.

I grant an upvote for doing it better than it has already been done.

~~~
bruceb
Thanks. There are still errors and bugs we are working on.

------
partymonger
edX and other great open education platforms are crippled when it comes to
actually discovering courses. Thank you for this menu card of course, very
helpful :)

~~~
bruceb
Thanks. We are actually missing some edX courses but they will be added in
very soon.

------
edgarvaldes
Is there any e-commerce MOOC out there?

