MOOC, anyone?

A MOOC is a massively open on-line class. The first round of three courses was offered last fall by Stanford University: Intro to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Databases. I have a signed certificate on my refrigerator from the instructors saying I successfully completed the Artificial Intelligence course. It was not an easy course. There were graded homeworks and tests along the way, and a midterm and a final exam. I'm sure the heavy dose of statistics was scary to some of the participants. I have taught statistics classes and I still struggled with some of the problems on Bayes Theorem.  

Since then a consortium of universities under the name Coursera have offered an increasingly diverse group of online courses. The word massive refers to the number of participants. I am signed up to take one starting in September that has 36,000 students so far. Open refers to the fact that there are no controls on who can take the class. Some classes have prerequisites, but if you feel you are qualified to sign up, that is all that matters. And there is no harm in dropping out. At any time you can unenroll from a class and try something else. I signed up for a class in Fantasy and Science Fiction this summer, but after reading 155 pages of the 223 required to write an essay on Grimm's Fairy Tales for week one, I gave up. They are not that interesting and the instructor made them even less interesting. So I have signed up for a physics based class called "How Things Work" taught by a professor from the University of Virginia, and an "Intro to Programming with Python" class taught by some folks from Rice University. There are more than 100 classes to choose from in lots of categories.  Here's one class from each broad category:  

Biology: Intro to Genome Science  
Business: Gamification  
Computer Science: Computational Photography  
Economics: Model Thinking   
Education: E-Learning and Digital Cultures (from U of Edinburgh)   
Engineering: Control of Mobile Robots   
Health: Principles of Obesity Economics   
Humanities: Listening to World Music  
Mathematics: Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp   
Physical Sciences: Introduction to Sustainability (from U of Illinois)    

The nice thing is that there is no transcript, no grade that goes anywhere but to you, and no harm if all you do is watch the videos and learn without turning anything in. It's nice to get your homework back graded so you can tell where you went wrong, but that is up to you. So check them out at Coursera. There might be something you always wanted to learn but couldn't afford to take at the local university. These classes are all free. Enjoy yourself. I can't wait until next summer when "Programming Your Robot Car" is offered. I'll be texting from my truck by Christmas 2013.