On online classes
In the last months, I have finished three four week long courses online. I will soon finish my fourth such course.
I have never met the Stanford Associate Professor (re)teaching me algorithms. Even if I were to see him in person, I may not recognize him. His videos were recorded five years ago - in 2012. Who knows what he looks like today?
I have never met my fellow "learners" which is how the site refers to us taking online learners.
Learning, which, for me, has never been a solitary activity, has become one out of necessity.
Yet, I am enjoying the process of learning online.
I like that it is self paced to an extent. The courses I am taking last four weeks each and there is enough each week to need about 4-6 hours of work. There are days when I don't have the energy to do coursework. Those days, I skip. Other days, I bang out a good chunk of time on the coursework because I'm in a better frame of mind.
I also LOVE that I can watch videos at 1.75x speed. I can burn through an hour of video material in 35-40 minutes. I use this so much that I once tried to listen to a video at normal speed. I lasted one minute. The lecturer sounded drone-y, like those Walkmans of yesteryear whose batteries were running out.
To me, the killer feature of online courses has to be the ability to revisit lectures to revise concepts.
In the years to come, I can imagine needing to brush up on the specifics of a certain algorithm. Instead of flailing through a million search results of questionable quality, all I need to do is to fire up Coursera and rewatch the exact video covering the topic I want to revise. And what's more, I can even read through old discussion forum posts related to the topic on hand.
As you can tell, I love me some online learning.
Here are the ones I have under my belt -