Edx.org Harvard, MIT, and Berkley team up for new wave of education!

[Hemlos]

Edx.org Harvard, MIT, and Berkley team up for new wave of education!

http://www.edx.org/

Hi gang! Great stuff here!

     Edx.org is a new system of education designed by MiT, and Harvard. Im writting up a review due to being HIGHLY impressed with what is offered from this new style of education system. This year they began thier new education project, which i have been following all year and now am participating in. This system is designed for researching how to better teach, and how to better understand how people learn. I will give a quick review of my experience at Edx.org, with the classes i am participating in, later in this review.

      The University of Texas System joins Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley in not-for-profit online learning collaborative. Berkley and University of Texas has recently jumped on board, and i suspect there will be other universities joining thier list in the years to come. These universities have opened thier campus to the public, and are offering a limited list of free courses in computer Science and other stuff. This is a new style of education, where you can be part of the class and become interactive with thier classes, offers;  lectures, homework, quizes, exams, walkthroughs, shorts, the works! At the end of any class you take, they will be offering for free(for now), a certificate of completion assuming you make the grade.

     You as a member, a student of Edx.org can register for any of these courses, at no obligation, and may freely register/unregister from any one of them as well. Furthermore, you do not have to do any homework, quizes, exams to in order to participate in the course, and you may study along with all the lectures at your own pace. However, if you want that certificate of completion, you must do the work. There is also an option to do a proctored exam to prove (to employers and the world) you actually have the know-how, though this is probably very limited by geographics.

Here is a list of all the classes offered at this time:

• MiT:


• 3.091x - Introduction to Solid State Chemistry
• 6.002x - Circuits and Electronics
• 6.00x   - Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

• Harvard:


• CS50x  - Introduction to Computer Science I
• PH207x- Health in numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Healther Research

• Berkley:


• CS169.1x - Software as a Service
• CS188.1x - Artificial Intelligence

Ok, i have registered for all 4 computer courses and now i will do a very brief review of my experience with them.

• MiT:


• 6.00x   - Introduction to Computer Science and Programming
• 
  A great class to get your feet wet with computer computation, where they teach (so far) basic mathematical algorithms, in the python language. By week 3 this has been a very rewarding class indeed!!! This class has already began, but im sure you may signup at any time and pickup here in week 3 very easiliy. You can begin with week 1 and catch up very easily if you have some time to dedicate to learning some cool stuff! This class is very easy to follow, with examples and very well explained via lecture.
  If you made it to highschool math, you can very much get a rewarding experience here! This course was designed for the student who has no programming experience, though you do need to be somewhat familliar with a computer. I look forward to completing this course.
  

• Harvard:


• CS50x  - Introduction to Computer Science I
• 
  WOW, this class has began this week, and WOW! This course seems to be going in the direction to an introduction to C programming. It looks and sounds VERY fun at this point, and the first lecture was just amazing, AMAZING! I look forward to completing this course as well!
  

• Berkley:


• 
  Note: Both courses offered by Berkley are not beginners courses.
  Though you can register and possibly walk away with something, even not living up to the prerequisits.
  
• CS169.1x - Software as a Service
• 
  Although this is a very advanced course, based on internet web programming(html,css,javascript,ruby), you can sign up with no obligation, download and install the editing software, and enjoy thier course anyway. Be warned, if you do not know Ruby, you will not be getting that certificate, they stated it is Ruby as a prereq, and they MEAN IT!
  


• CS188.1x - Artificial Intelligence
• 
  This course sounds great, i am following along with the lectures. Due to my lack of undergraduate math under my belt, i will not be able to complete all the work, however i will continue to watch all the lectures. So far, the methods underlying the Ai programming is very well documented. Regardless of my weakness in math, certainly i will walk away in the end with more knowledge about Ai programming than i ever imagined! Note and warning: In order to complete the work in this class you will definetly need at least Trig and calculus know-how. But this doesnt mean you can follow along and take in some VERY useful information as the course progresses!
  

That is my review.
In short, i must say, that this new system of education is very personally rewarding, simply AWESOME!!!
i highly recommend any of these courses to everyone, college grads and otherwise!

Back to class!
-Neil

PS. If you sign up too, post a message here in this thread, and perhaps we can help each other out!

[mentalthink]

hi Hemlos, a lot of thanks for this... I think I go to make the programming and perhaps the Electronics circuits... I´m not sure if finally I will do... but this it´s very interesting... Thanks a lot!!! 

[Hemlos]

 

Welcome aboard!
I highly recommend these:
6.00x   - Introduction to Computer Science and Programming
CS50x  - Introduction to Computer Science I

At this point they already started, but im sure anyone can catch-up easily.
I am enrolled in those two currently, in hopes to complete them for a certificate in the end.

[mentalthink]

I go to communicate this courses in a Spaninsh Forum, about Retro-Computing... they make Computers, and a lot of things whit old- 8 Bits Computers.-- Perhaps someone are interestes...

Thanks Again!!! 

[AmazingJas]

I am completing the Harvard and MIT computer science subjects. I have been coding for years but never realized how much fundamental stuff I didn't know. The MIT course learning curve got a bit steep this week (took me a while to get my head around recursive bisection searches). The syntax of python also takes some getting used to, but the principles are pretty sound.

Would like to do the AI course next semester if I can.

[r0ber7]

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing!

[Hemlos]

I am completing the Harvard and MIT computer science subjects. I have been coding for years but never realized how much fundamental stuff I didn't know. The MIT course learning curve got a bit steep this week (took me a while to get my head around recursive bisection searches). The syntax of python also takes some getting used to, but the principles are pretty sound.

Would like to do the AI course next semester if I can.

Cool stuff. My brain melted when trying to comprehend the recursive towers of hanoi today. Hopefully we dont need to do something like that on the finals.  However, I put a project for that TOH in the beta section for GLBasic, converting it was easy. Computation is pretty thorough in the mit 6.00x, im really learning alot from it...and i expect to be able to get finish it. I like Eric, he is a great teacher.

In the Ai course they use python to make a pacman game....the math in that course is a mind smasher...you better know trig or calculus. I got stumped when i hit depth-first search algorithms for making pacman find the lonely dot. You have to be familiar with LIFO and FIFO stacks too. They list the prerequisits, if you dont know what each one is, dont expect to complete the class. The reason i cant finish the work is because im still new to python, but i also realize i will need to brush up on my math before i try it again. The best part of the ai course at berkley is you can just skip it all and absorb the lectures, afterall its free. Gernot made a findpath algorithm which is based on the A* search method, they lecture on that too.

[r0ber7]

I just finished the first assignment for Harvard's Computer Science 50. So far it's pretty basic, I hope they will go deeper soon. But glancing at the subjects of the coming weeks, I suspect they will.  I'm particularly interested in the lectures on webdesign, since I develop those for money.

[Slydog]

Amazing, all this for free?  And no obligations?
Those courses don't sound enticing enough yet, but if they offered something in graphics, either OpenGL, or even 3d modeling, PhotoShop, etc I may be interested.  I suck at graphics and would love to learn some techniques for an artistically untalented person to create some simple, yet 'good looking' game graphics.

The AI course *sounds* interesting, but the maths scare me!  I haven't done calculus for 25 years!  It is a topic I would love to already know, but don't want to invest the efforts in learning it! ha.

[Hemlos]

Incredible...ive come to a point in the lectures where an array can store elements as function calls.
Arrays of funtions, embedded as arrays inside of indices within an array, just mind blowingly amazing.

array = [[abs,fact,pow,sqr,f1,f300],12345.00]
the output would be an array of elements where all those functions are applied to 12345.00!!

[Hemlos]

Amazing, all this for free?  And no obligations?

None

Those courses don't sound enticing enough yet, but if they offered something in graphics, either OpenGL, or even 3d modeling, PhotoShop, etc I may be interested. 

I suck at graphics and would love to learn some techniques for an artistically untalented person to create some simple, yet 'good looking' game graphics.

Me too, im in that boat also. Maybe someone in the forums can direct us to a good resource?

The AI course *sounds* interesting, but the maths scare me!

You really need to know python at an expert level, so far, this seems most important.
Iim still a noob there in python. but the theories of Ai are all in lectures, and i am attempting to abosorb it all....free.
Sign up, watch the lectures, free free free

[AmazingJas]

If u get through the AI module, feel free to make a complete list of the concepts one would need to know before really attempting it...then I'll have some homework.

[AmazingJas]

I wish I'd completed a bit of a refresher on math before beginning the MITx course...Took me ages to work out the polynomial exercises this week because it's been 25 years since I last looked at one. Onto hangman now though...should be more familiar territory.

[Hemlos]

I wish I'd completed a bit of a refresher on math before beginning the MITx course...Took me ages to work out the polynomial exercises this week because it's been 25 years since I last looked at one. Onto hangman now though...should be more familiar territory.

Ugh, i just finished pset03.q2, took about an hour to work out 7 lines of code.   

Onto newtons method and hangman today.

[Hemlos]

Hey slydog,

I think the Edx gods answered your prayers....Berkley just today has added a graphics course!

Interestingly enough, i think most of the lectures are already posted on Youtube(CS184 Channel)

Note: its free, anyone can sign up and try to earn a certificate from berkley at this link: http://www.edx.org

CS184.1x teaches the Foundations of Computer Graphics

ABOUT THIS COURSE

CS184.1x teaches the Foundations of Computer Graphics. Students will make images of 3D scenes in real-time, and with offline raytracing. This course runs for 6 weeks and consists of four segments. Each segment includes an individual programming assignment:
Overview and Basic Math (Homework 0: 10% of grade)
Transformations (Homework 1: 20% of grade)
OpenGL and Lighting (Homework 2: 35% of grade)
Raytracing (Homework 3: 35% of grade)
This term, students who earn a total score of 50% or greater will have passed the course and may obtain a free honor code certificate from BerkeleyX.


PREREQUISITES

Solid C/C++ programming background (Java is ok too; you will pick up C++).
Access to a relatively up-to-date computer (Windows, Mac OSX or Linux)
Solid high school mathematics; a review of the relevant linear algebra is included in the first segment.