Anyone tried online learning courses?

lindsmuse

This site - https://www.coursera.org/courses

This seems pretty amazing. These courses are for free. A friend is doing the 'Gamification' course - whatever that is and seems happy with it. I've signed up for this:

https://www.coursera.org/course/foe

Any opinions on this type of education? I would use my course to put together a tutorial on illustration probably - but I'm generally interested in Education and presenting whatever you are teaching, well - very well.

jt

No experience with the course/site but i would suggest that if you are not going to be doing the illustration thing so much then you should definately look into information design if they have it. The thing with gamification is that it is an incredible concept that works extremely well with education. Imo, gamification is the future of education. In fact, its been done with really good results already. If you read up about gamification (the ted talk by gabe zichermann is a good start) you going to want to incorporate it and it will surely creep into your ideas. Good stuff this!!!

epictring

I've just been accepted to study Information Design at Tukkies in 2013, super excited. The course they have there is incredibly diverse and covers A LOT of different media mediums. I believe there's also "enough" (for the current job crisis) work for it professionally, since it covers so many areas of expertise (I have a friend who works at an advertisement agency that does FNB ads etc.).

The UP course is a 3 year degree though.

21Fretter

A lot of these free online course sites have popped up lately. You obviously will not receive any official diploma but I do believe Cousera does give you an "online certificate" of some sort. From my understanding though, most of these courses are actually designed and taught by the actual professors and lecturers that would teach them if you went to a very legit university i.e. some of the courses are taught by MIT professors, so you will definitely be gaining legit knowledge, you just can't really prove it to anyone I guess :\ I'm still meaning to start one of the courses, I've only been watching some Khan Academy videos.

Bob-Dubery

21Fretter wrote A lot of these free online course sites have popped up lately. You obviously will not receive any official diploma but I do believe Cousera does give you an "online certificate" of some sort. From my understanding though, most of these courses are actually designed and taught by the actual professors and lecturers that would teach them if you went to a very legit university i.e. some of the courses are taught by MIT professors, so you will definitely be gaining legit knowledge, you just can't really prove it to anyone I guess :\ I'm still meaning to start one of the courses, I've only been watching some Khan Academy videos.

Bah! What happened to the days when you could buy a degree from the University of Britney Spears? All this studying wastes time that could more profitably be spent drinking beer, playing guitar or sitting on one's butt.

lindsmuse

Thanks Jethro - I will check Gamification for myself then (TED) - the guy I know who's doing it teaches at a private school - computers - and is very dedicated. So it must be worth something.

epicstring, I think that Tukkies degree is definitely worth doing. Its the way to go in this economy and era . Good luck!

21fretter - yes it's a pity you don't get a Diploma - cause it's time and work and as you say, accredited educators, but I'm past looking for employment - so don't have to present Diplomas etc - I have to create my own businesses - whatever they may be.

I maaaaay just do the CELTA course next year - costs an arm and a leg - you do it in one month - very intensive - so life has to come to a standstill while you try and force a whole lot of info into your brain (don't like this thought much ☹) It's a Cambridge Uni endorsed 'teaching English as a foreign language' course - and the Cape Town one can't be done part time ... But the benefits I would think would outweigh a couple days of intense discomfort! And wounded pocket.

lindsmuse

X-rated Bob wrote
21Fretter wrote A lot of these free online course sites have popped up lately. You obviously will not receive any official diploma but I do believe Cousera does give you an "online certificate" of some sort. From my understanding though, most of these courses are actually designed and taught by the actual professors and lecturers that would teach them if you went to a very legit university i.e. some of the courses are taught by MIT professors, so you will definitely be gaining legit knowledge, you just can't really prove it to anyone I guess :\ I'm still meaning to start one of the courses, I've only been watching some Khan Academy videos.
Bah! What happened to the days when you could buy a degree from the University of Britney Spears? All this studying wastes time that could more profitably be spent drinking beer, playing guitar or sitting on one's butt.

? Been there done that

21Fretter

lindsmuse wrote

21fretter - yes it's a pity you don't get a Diploma - cause it's time and work and as you say, accredited educators, but I'm past looking for employment - so don't have to present Diplomas etc - I have to create my own businesses - whatever they may be.

I can't see why these wouldn't benefit you greatly in this situation.

P.S. Here are some more links I've kept

http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses (harvard)
http://oyc.yale.edu/ (Yale)
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm (MIT)
http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse
http://www.academicearth.org/

lindsmuse

Wow thanks for these 21fretter. Will check them out. Checked out the TED talk on gamification - that was very interesting

21Fretter

Despite having a Cousera account for a good while, I never signed up for a course but this thread got me moving, signed up for a 10 week course on Genetics and Evolutions. Will let you know guys how it goes if anyone is interested.

lindsmuse

Good luck! There are some amazing courses in there. Mine starts next year January - when do you start?

Squonk

I have signed up for the songwriting course. Starts in March

jt

Goodluck to all! Anyway, i recently watched this neat info design TED talk by David McCandles. Good stuff there too. And for epicstring, its a good motivational taster!

jt

Goodluck to all! Anyway, i recently watched this neat info design TED talk by David McCandles. Good stuff there too. And for epicstring, its a good motivational taster!

lindsmuse

Great stuff Squonk. Will go and look and see what that's about. I think there's other music courses as well

epictring

Jethro wrote Goodluck to all! Anyway, i recently watched this neat info design TED talk by David McCandles. Good stuff there too. And for epicstring, its a good motivational taster!

I actually watched that about 2 days ago as well.

Word of advice to anyone interested in Information Design at UP: It's not easy getting in, you need to submit an artistic portfolio of your work (sketches, and any other design type material - even photography) then if that's accepted, you need to go for an Interview and Test procedure where a panel of people throws questions as well as tests at you. The tests are mostly conceptual (thinking out of the box, quite difficult) and then they choose under 60 (I think) for the course out of hundreds if not thousands of other candidates.

Oh and it's 4 years, not 3, sorry for the typo earlier.

I just wanted to throw this out there, there isn't a lot of information about this type of course online.
I feel really blessed to have been accepted.