Online Education Boom
Recently there is an explosion in the online courses for higher education. It’s a great chance for people looking for comprehensive academic classes. I started with a bunch of these classes but time proved that I should have selected wisely. Because they are not fluffy little tutorials. You really have to take the time to watch the videos, take the exams and hand in the assignments. So here are the ones that I find useful mixed with some of the older resources I used for similar purposes.
Udacity is one of my favourites. It’s very forgiving about the deadlines. It uses Youtube extensively. You can even take the quizes and answer questions right on the video and submit your results. It has very nice courses including Applied Cryptography and Artificial Intelligence.
Coursera has a ton of Stanford classes like Cryptography, Machine Learning and Computer Networks. I had started Machine Learning course when it was in sort of a beta phase and was running on ml-class.org. Princeton university offers nice computer science classes as well under this site.
I don’t know if this was a beta site but it offers only one class by MIT: Circuits and Electronics. More about MIT courses below…
edX has a small but quality selection of courses from MIT, Harvard and Berkeley. Software as a Service and Artificial Intelligence courses from Berkeley look delicious.
I personally haven’t tried this site but heard from a friend. From the looks of it I think they have mostly old material. They have some video courses from Stanford which I had seen a few years ago from iTunesU. Still it may worth keeping an eye on.
iTunesU was a gold mine in my eyes when I first discovered it. Watching course from Stanford while commuting was a great way making good use of time. Now the more interactive courses overshadowed it but it’s not dead yet. Far from it. Apple released an iTunesU app which allows to download your favourite courses very easily.
Frankly I’m not a big fan it. Compared to the rest it has rather simple and entry-level tutorials. But still shoulders an important mission and helps a lot of people get some valuable resources so I thought it’s worth mentioning.