Lots of new Coursera classes throughout 2012 posted | Hacker News Reader

Lots of new Coursera classes throughout 2012 posted

coursera.org

70 pointsjpdus21 comments

I love this. I really do but I do have a fear:

There is beginning to be too much fragmentation in subject matter.

There is no discernible ultimate goal (degree or overall subject matter certificate) or any kind of solid path to coalesce all of the work a student puts into the classes into a coherent structure -- a well defined learning path.

I am hoping this is part of a strategy to gauge demand for different subject areas and, from there, create a cohesive program because if it is going to be more or less random offerings...I don't know how that is going to remain relevant or viable.

It just seems confusing as to what their intentions are.

I like Skillshare's approach in this regard of being the basic class unit through which teachers can weave curriculums. I've been looking for an education startup that was literally a step-by-step guide to learning a subject. Like a curated curriculum to acquiring a skill or learning a certain point of view about the world.

Conceivably, there could be a complementary movement focused on designing curricula based on such freely available courses. These curricula could even be based on offerings from several services.

Companies can set curricula based on what their requirements are. And I can see possible demand for influential people to create and share curricula related to their areas of expertise.

Yes, imagine a website where you post step-by-step instructions to a goal. The work of discovery is done by the curator and the student can wander through the paths just a link away from the necessary material. Match that with a quora-like information architecture and you've got something going.

Why would it be better to have an ultimate goal? The intentions are clearly just to give people who are hungry to learn about some subject matter a great place to go learn it. That's a fantastic service.

While the typical answer of "to prove your time investment to a third party" is a good one, I don't think that aspect would be relevant for me.

For me the answer would be so I know where I stand.

e.g. I come back after a year or two and I know what material I have covered and what steps are next in the learning journey. I don't want to get three lectures or more in and realize I'm rehashing material, or, alternately, that I am hopelessly lost because I've skipped a pre-requisite and have to go digging for the missing piece.

Gradesquare (http://gradesquare.com/) was launched with the idea that folks would want to plan and track their (perhaps diverse or fragmented) online learning experiences.

I tend to think about learning in two different categories:

1) Learning for the sake of the subject itself: the goal is simply to learn - no need to specifically prove competence to a third party.

2) Learning for credential. We need to pay the bills - or want bragging rights. Credentials are required to signal that we have obtained competency in a subject area.

For myself (not-quite-youngish with a BA, MA, other graduate work/certifications) , I sign up for online classes with 1) primarily in view. For my kids (high-school age and younger) 2) is also a concern.

It is likely that Coursera (or Udacity or MitX) will eventually create certifications based upon groups of programs. A third party might well group classes in logical sets across institutions. So I hope you are not too fearful - change may bring about some remarkable new opportunities :).

The new courses are great, but there's something I don't understand about these course websites. I'm doing probabilistic graphical models, but I just want the content to learn, and I don't really care much about some certificate. I also don't have a lot of time this particular month. I'm guessing that this is true for the majority of people taking the course (I'd be interested to see how many people who signed up actually kept up). What is the point in making time limited offerings for an online, recorded course?

I think they want the social aspects of a bunch of people doing the course and having discussions/QA on the course forums. Personally I found visiting the forums during the ML course last year to be pretty depressing. seemed to be a mix of entitled whining and nauseatingly giddy excitement, both of which killed my learning boner. Overall great experience though.

Think DeVry more than Khan.

I really like the ongoing Crypto course - it will be interesting to see how they implement classes in disciplines like healthcare or history. But obviously they are making good use of their recently raised $16m [1] [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857184

It's kind of funny. I along with many of you I'm sure read the article in The Atlantic last night about Facebook and it being time to "move on". Coursera is a great example of someone promisingly attacking a newish problem. Basically, it is the type of startup I would assume the author of the article would advocate for. But then there at least two courses I counted on modeling and analyzing "the network". It's ironic, although it really just furthers the Atlantic writer's point, in that these are mature things that we are beginning to understand in an extremely detailed way.

Link to previous HN discussion from yesterday:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3857119

This is ridiculously good. I would sign up for all of these courses if I had the time to. It's been a while since I've been this excited about learning.

Great, I was wondering if they were going to repeat graphical probabilistic models since I missed it.

Wanted to do the Algo class, turned out to be a pain in the butt. These people need to work on their friction problems, and it felt like they're just flying by the seat of their pants. I hope they're not just half-assed Khan pretenders.

What were the friction problems?

I'd much rather than go crazy with the experiments in this early stage and figure out what works, then try to stick to some super organized and rigid model that probably isn't the best.

I was happy with ml-class from last semester, and I also pretty happy with pgm-class this semester.

I think they should offer fewer classes until they can accomodate those who are interested in the existing ones, but I'm guessing they're trying to be all entrepreneurial and first-mover-advantage and oh look everybody's getting a $1B valuation these days. They also made me sign up twice.

I am not sure what exactly you mean by "friction problems", but one thing I am sure about is that it wasn't half-assed. Tim Roughgarden did an excellent job and went beyond the call of duty to provide advanced videos which covered material that wasn't within the scope of the course. My only problem with the class was that it was too short. I am eagerly awaiting for the second part of the class.

I never even got to the class. I received an email saying the class was going to be late, and the next one I got was when the class was already a week underway.

I am happy to see courses in the humanities. The Greek and Roman Mythology course looks like fun.

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