MIT Open Courseware - or any open courseware (program, graduated, teacher)
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Anyone ever study on their own via an open courseware class?
I believe MIT has all of its courses available through open courseware, which does not confer credit, nor does it allow contact with the instructor or enroll you in the class, but is kind of like an online audit, at your own pace.
I just found out about it and have downloaded an introductory programming class from MIT, where, if I dare, I will learn to write programs in python. Considering all I know of programming is very basic Basic (10 PRINT "Hello" 20 GO TO 10 RUN ) that I learned in 6th grade (27 years ago), it should be a challenge, but I am curious.
The particular course I am taking does not require a textbook- all notes and readings are online - so it is apparently free except for my time investment. Not sure how many OCW classes have no text.
Yeah, I have been checking out MIT's Open Courseware for some time now. Pretty cool. Some of the 'courses' have video lectures complete with transcripts containing every word spoken.
I've been browsing around it today and there is a Physics one from 1999 that appears to be very popular and the video lectures look like they would be quite interesting.
When I was preparing for the Ap biology exam I watched the entire video lectures on their introduction to biology class. Sure helped out since I passed the exam.
I really wish they would put more up though.
After watching the class online it really makes you wonder, why bother going to the classroom? Especially if someone recorded the entire lecture.
After watching the class online it really makes you wonder, why bother going to the classroom? Especially if someone recorded the entire lecture.
If you are simply curious about the material, than yeah, why go? However, there is no teacher or classroom interaction so how do you know if you are actually learning the subject matter or just memorizing the lecture notes?
After watching the class online it really makes you wonder, why bother going to the classroom? Especially if someone recorded the entire lecture.
If you are simply curious about the material, than yeah, why go? However, there is no teacher or classroom interaction so how do you know if you are actually learning the subject matter or just memorizing the lecture notes?
After watching the class online it really makes you wonder, why bother going to the classroom? Especially if someone recorded the entire lecture.
For the programming class, at least the first lecture (that is as far as I have gotten) is not online.
The first assignment has you write a very very simple program but I have yet to come across material that explains how to do it. I am farther into the reading than I should need to be to complete the assignment; I assume something was covered in the lecture or recitation session. I am going back later today to see if I have missed something; otherwise I will be using google to find supplemental tutorial materials for Python.
i recently graduated from mit and if you are talking about 6.00 intro to python, i took that class my last semester.
the problem with open courseware is that at mit, you do A LOT of your learning in office hours and through group work. Only the smartest students (and at mit that is very genius level) could get through by just going to lecture and then doing the problem sets on their own. I actually used OCW a lot while at MIT to look at tests from previous years but don't think it would be that helpful if I wasn't actually in the class.
As far as 6.00. The psets are evil and full of trickery. They start off pretty easy and basic but by the fourth or fifth started taking around 10 hours to do with a lot of hints and help from classmates.
Oh MIT, how I miss your lovely people but am absolutely glad to be as physically far away as possible from your classrooms. I think the physics lectures you are talking about are the ones by Walter Lewin. I was in one of his classes and it was absolutely amazing although we didnt get the cool demonstrations that he did for the large lectures. Google them, the lecture videos were featured in the NYTimes.
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