

Concise list of upcoming Coursera courses by month - dhawalhs
https://plus.google.com/b/107809899089663019971/107809899089663019971/posts/763w1GE2qNe

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dfriedmn
This really makes me wish they would leave content up rather than following
the cohort model -- there are a handful of classes I'd like to take, but their
current model forces users to basically adhere to the university schedule
(they have 4x more courses starting in september than any other month).
Udacity made the switch after a couple months of trying the cohort model --
hope Coursera considers the same.

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inovica
I agree. Over the Summer I wanted to do the Python course with my son (9 years
old) but it doesn't start until October, when he'll be back at school. Shame.
Doing the Learn Python the Hard Way with him instead

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droithomme
Udacity has a CS101 in Python that you can start at any time and can be
mastered by a 9 yr old with parental guidance. Check it out. I am sure you
will be happy with it and your son will have a good time.

Their interface is a lot better and their teachers are great, they've really
created a new pedagogy around the new medium rather than adapt existing brick
and mortar courses like Coursera and edX is doing. Mind you Coursera and MITx
is a great way to get real college classes over the web, but Udacity is
rebuilding the whole paradigm and is intensely analyzing data and tweaking to
improve things.

[http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs101/CourseRev/apr20...](http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs101/CourseRev/apr2012)

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cypherpnks
Personally, I'm rooting for the open software/open content model of edX, or
the very high quality pedagogy of Khan Academy and Udacity.

The Coursera courses I've taken were, by and large, fairly mediocre, and the
company is hyper-secretive and hyper-aggressive. I'm worried it might turn
into the Microsoft (of the eighties) of education -- grab the market, flood it
with mediocrity, and outmaneuver everyone from a business standpoint. I'm also
worried that they might burn a lot of people out on on-line courses; they can
be very well done (as with edX, Khan, and Udacity), but because of their
landgrab model/quantity over quality, most people will probably have their
first exposure through Coursera.

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zheng
So I've only been tangentially involved with these online education companies,
what makes Coursera classes so much worse than Udacity?

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cypherpnks
A few things:

* Udacity really tries to learn how to exploit the on-line medium well. Coursera tosses courses not that different from a capture of the normal university course on-line. Coursera instructors have minimal support in how to put together a good on-line course. This comes across in a huge number of ways (as with Khan, you're being tutored, not lectured at, with tight integration of questions/videos, etc.).

* Udacity courses have massive post-production. There's a big difference between a professional recording followed by editing, and a professor with a webcam and a tablet on which to capture PPT slides.

* Udacity courses target a narrower range of subjects, and so have appropriate technologies to teach those subjects. Coursera is one-size-fits-all. It really doesn't work well in many contexts.

The major downside of Udacity is related -- they mostly target intro CS
classes. Coursera has a much broader selection of richer classes.

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kmfrk
It's a little like the Apple approach versus the Microsoft approach. Udacity
has so many amazing details like the camera fixed above the teacher's hand as
s/he draws.

Coursera's algorithm course felt like every mediocre YouTube video. It has
little to do with Salman Khan's idea of an online university. They seem to
employ a quantitative approach compared to Udacity. You also hear a lot of
announcements from Udacity about courses that didn't make the cut, because it
fell below their own high standards.

At one point, Coursera will have to remove some of their courses from their
website, because they are so poor, and it's going to be a mess. I like that
Udacity are already very careful about what they put up. That way, they don't
waste people's precious time either.

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daviddaviddavid
It's a shame the offerings for music are so small (limited just to "Listening
to World Music"). I bet I'm not the only person who would leap at the chance
to take a top notch music theory class.

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rvid
A music theory course would be particularly awesome with some nice online
tools. (Something like mitx's interactive lab, but for music).

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eupharis
Don't see this mentioned anywhere else yet:

I was just going to bookmark this list itself, thinking it some random post by
some random google plus person, but it looks like the mother website (class-
central.com) is dedicated to just providing a constantly updated list of
online offerings from Udacity, Coursera, and edX. Essentially, a MOOC
aggregator.

I was thinking to myself just a few weeks ago how nice something like this
would be. I <3 the internets.

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avolcano
Just signed up for Algorithms, Part I. I probably won't be able to take that
at my college for several more semesters, and this is information I'd actually
like to know, but something that I've struggled to learn in isolation. Very
exciting :)

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tocomment
Google wants me to sign in before I can even read them. Am I doing something
wrong?

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dkd
It's googleplus page so it probably needs your google ID.

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Paul_S
I'd understand if it wanted my login credentials to post a reply but why do I
need to log in to _read_ a post. This is ridiculous.

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tocomment
Yeah, my sentiments exactly! And I kept hearing about how google plus is a
great blogging platform, it really doesn't seem like it.

