Chris M.

coursera.org main page As a programmer by profession I've wanted to start learning Python. I signed up for An introduction to Interactive Programming in Python  on Coursera in September. It was a free course from Rice University. Now that the course is complete I wanted to share where I thought it did well and where it could have benefited by stepping away from the ideas of traditional courses. The material in the course was presented through lecture videos and online programming examples. Each week of the course consisted of lectures, followed by quizzes and mini-projects that required knowledge of that week's material in order to complete. Because the course was supported by professors and teaching assistants at Rice University there was support for students via online forums and chats, although I never used any of these resources. Capture of a video of Joe Warren, one of the professors at Rice University The presentation of the material was clear and the produ...

Online learning has started to move into the mainstream. Stamford, MIT and others have been offering online classes for years but  in the past few years the idea really stated to take off.  While it may seem obvious that the Internet might provide a great conduit to educate, it has taken dozens of years for the approach to gain traction. As online education improves there are clear signs of disruption in the traditional education system. Udacity CS344 - Introduction to parallel programming The model for online courses is a powerful one. A single set of materials can be created once and distributed at almost zero incremental cost. Some courses are self paced and fully automated. Others are supported by a teacher and staff that grade submissions, provides help on forums and may hold group chats. Some colleges/courses are experimenting with a hybrid model  that leverages the Internet to deliver the portions of the course best suited to it, such as lecture notes or p...