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Free courses offered by coursera and udacity in a variety of subjects


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#1 Hydrogen

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 01:55 PM

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There are a bunch of courses being offered by coursera and udacity. These courses are free to everyone to take and cover a wide range of topics including anatomy, history, computer science, etc. If you haven't already heard of coursera or udacity, I highly suggest you check them out: http://www.coursera.com and http://www.udacity.com.

I've signed up for the machine learning course from coursera and the programming languages course from udacity. What have you signed up for?

#2 trizzle

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:02 PM

I just signed up to a few of the medicine ones, as I aspire to be a doctor one day. These look really interesting, thank you Hydrogen.

#3 Mishatu

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:02 PM

I'm trying to decide if I want to take courses that will make my college life easier or courses that I'm simply interested in learning. Thanks so much for the links!

#4 Elindoril

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:06 PM

When I saw the title I thought this was a spambot created topic. Posted Image

#5 Hydrogen

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:10 PM

When I saw the title I thought this was a spambot created topic. Posted Image

I only spam on Thursdays in various parts of the interbutts. Some of that work must be bleeding into my regular life :p.

#6 Waser Lave

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:20 PM

I was registered on the Harvard Machine Learning course (also free) but haven't been keeping up with it recently. :/ I think it's part of Coursera so it's probably the same one you signed up for. :p I also registered for the Computer Vision one because I just love me some computer vision.

#7 Hydrogen

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:27 PM

I was registered on the Harvard Machine Learning course (also free) but haven't been keeping up with it recently. :/ I think it's part of Coursera so it's probably the same one you signed up for. :p I also registered for the Computer Vision one because I just love me some computer vision.

Yeah it's the same one. I did about three weeks of that course but also dropped out. Life got a little busy. I'm going to try it again and see if I can finally learn machine learning :p. I've been wanting to learn it for a really long time.

#8 ToxicS

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:40 PM

Pretty cool; my dad will like these. Thanks

#9 Silky

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:49 PM

I am definitely going to enroll in a few of these, I haven't decided exactly what all I want to learn, but I am leaning toward the Applied Cryptography because I already know a bit about it from previous years of study

At any rate thanks for the links!

#10 luvsmyncis

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 02:49 PM

Wow, thanks for sharing this. I like learning, but I don't like paying people to teach me things! So this is just perfect.
I signed up for "Computer Science 101" because I am hopelessly stupid when it comes to these contraptions. Also, it starts tomorrow, so that's exciting! Maybe I'll learn how not to cry whenever my computer does weird shit.
I also signed up for "Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World" and "Greek and Roman Mythology", because I like to read, but those start later this year.

#11 Nonexistent

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 03:04 PM

Ate these courses provided online? As in, I attend them through the Internet right, not actual classrooms?

Edited by Nonexistent, 22 April 2012 - 03:05 PM.


#12 WharfRat

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 03:08 PM

I know I posted these years ago... but other good places are www.academicearth.org , MIT Opencoureware, and obviously www.khanacademy.org

Courses ranging in subjects from schools such as Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc are all on academic earth. MIT Opencourseware is strictly MIT courses... but they are awesome.

And Khanacademy is a fantastic project to offer free education to all online.

#13 Hydrogen

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 03:11 PM

Ate these courses provided online? As in, I attend them through the Internet right, not actual classrooms?

Yes, they are administered completely online.

I know I posted these years ago... but other good places are www.academicearth.org , MIT Opencoureware, and obviously www.khanacademy.org

Courses ranging in subjects from schools such as Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc are all on academic earth. MIT Opencourseware is strictly MIT courses... but they are awesome.

And Khanacademy is a fantastic project to offer free education to all online.

I like KhanAcademy quite a bit. I haven't tried MIT open courseware yet. I feel this whole free education thing is going to be huge :D. Just the other day, I saw a commercial for online high school education! That's amazing!

#14 Nonexistent

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 03:16 PM

Wow thanks!
I've signed up for the computer science 101, then I'll see where I can go from there

#15 WharfRat

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 03:16 PM

Yes, they are administered completely online.


I like KhanAcademy quite a bit. I haven't tried MIT open courseware yet. I feel this whole free education thing is going to be huge :D. Just the other day, I saw a commercial for online high school education! That's amazing!

It really is incredible. Now if we can get internet access to impoverished people all around the world perhaps we can make substantive changes in developing nations.

#16 Romy

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 05:44 PM

I've signed up for the machine learning course from coursera and the programming languages course from udacity. What have you signed up for?


Signed up for the Java/HTML course.

Thanks a lot Hydro :)

#17 willy101

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 05:53 PM

The compsci one was widely publicized i'll probably start these after finals

#18 lackofaith

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 05:58 PM

HOW COOL!
Want logic, mythology, and genome science.
Thanks for this; I like productive things.

#19 AwesomePossum

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 06:49 PM

This is awesome, Hydrogen!! Thanks for sharing! Posted Image

I've already signed up for the programming courses from Udacity & I'm still looking at Coursera. Posted Image

#20 syaopup

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 07:16 PM

Here's a list of stuff I tried and got me enough skills to code simple programs. Not all are from Universities, but they are still decent for those who prefer hands on.

Code Academy
This is an interactive step by step tutorial where they teach you the basics of programming, then gives you tasks to complete, with immediate feedback of the code you type in from within the browser. If you are stuck, you can look at the forums and there are bound to be people who have met similar problems and have their questions answered. It's great for learning simple coding concepts like while loops, functions, etc.

Stanford School of Engineering
I love Stanford. The online lecture Programming Methodology CS106A (Programming experience not a prerequisite) was the lecture that put everything I learned about programming together. If scripting a working program is like writing literature and the programming language is like English (or any other languages), this course teaches you literature first before jumping into the details of syntax and such, as the main aim of this course is to teach you how to write beautiful code. In the first few lessons, they throw you some working functions, tell you not to fret over how they are made, but just know what they are supposed to do, and then make a robot do something. In a sense, it's like giving you some ready made sentences and asking you to piece it together to form an essay. (As opposed to 'this is how you form a sentence, now go make an essay') The teacher is really good too, he makes the class lively with the funny jokes and examples he makes when teaching, and because of that, it's easier to understand some of the harder concepts.
I'm not sure if most other programming courses are taught like this because I have not checked them out, but the courses I took irl paled in comparison and I learned near 0 from them. This is the single course that made me realise I'm not so stupid that I can't get programming concepts, and made me decide to go pursue a CS/CE degree.

Free video lectures
I think this is more of a directory or some sorts, it lists all courses found online for a particular subject you are interested in. It includes a couple of youtube series that are not full fledged lectures, so it might not be your cup of tea.

#21 redlion

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Posted 22 April 2012 - 07:27 PM

I've been interested in these a lot recently. I'm sort of taking a gap year (admittedly in the middle of my uni career) but I still feel sorta starved for learning. I watch a lot of TED talks, and some harvard lectures and a lot of Richard Dawkins sponsored lectures, but not anything structured like a course would be. It will take me ages to look through all the resources in this thread.

One thing I've always found ironic is that there is so much information on the web, but so very little of it is accessible. Plenty of universities and corporations use the WWW to share information across large distances, but much of it is locked in the "deep web" with no active hyperlinks for search spyders to crawl, and even more is locked in password protected areas.

I find a growing need for better ways to search and index the web. And don't mention Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't an index, it's a glossary.

#22 Hydrogen

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Posted 25 April 2012 - 08:45 PM

The courses have just started and I've been watching the lecture videos for the compilers course for the past hour. It's great. If you haven't already signed up, you really should. If you have a background in computer science, I highly recommend you take a compilers course at some point in your life. Every programmer should implement a programming language at some point.

#23 Frizzle

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Posted 25 April 2012 - 09:53 PM

Do you gain anything substantive from them? I've signed up for greek/roman mythology and looks like something to keep me occupied.

I've felt that since I've left college that I haven't really challenged myself other than work related topics.

#24 Waser Lave

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Posted 26 April 2012 - 02:42 AM

Do you gain anything substantive from them? I've signed up for greek/roman mythology and looks like something to keep me occupied.

I've felt that since I've left college that I haven't really challenged myself other than work related topics.


You'll probably get a printable certificate if that's what you're looking for. :p

#25 sarah.

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Posted 26 April 2012 - 05:28 AM

You'll probably get a printable certificate if that's what you're looking for. :p

Are they actually "worth" anything, or is it just to say... well done, you did it?


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