adrienne
@adrienne
Has anyone here taken any of the free online college courses offered thru MIT, Stanford, Coursera etc? I have an undergraduate degree in Environmental Engineering and spent my professional career in Software Engineering and general business/management. In the coming year I’m going to have a little more free personal time and I’m considering trying one of these courses and curious to hear anyone’s experience. I’ve done lots of continuous learning over the years- reading blogs and books, listening to talks, plus some formal professional training - but all of a sudden I’m yearning for a classroom and more structured curriculum. The only question I have is whether to do computer science (to satisfy my desire to know the difference between on the job learning and what is being taught) or humanities (because I missed out in college).
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
Yes! LOTS of them over the years! Lifelong learner and all that fun stuff :D They give a great structure and pacing to learning with a lot of flexibility for your schedule. Self-directed learning is *great*, but you don't know what you don't know, so having a teacher-created curriculum, and depending on the class you're taken, the feedback of teachers and other students is SUPER helpful for accelerating that learning.
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adrienne
@adrienne
Makes total sense, thank you! What has been your favorite of the ones you’ve taken so far?
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
I've done a lot of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology classes over the years. Also, been brushing up on data science the last couple years towards some future goals. I actually ended up going back to college in January to finish up my degree and that came with a free Coursera membership, but I haven't really checked it out lately because I've already got a full load of classes now. But the experience is *very* similar - I'm finishing up my degree online, and so the structure and asynchronous pace is very similar to what all those course platforms are doing.
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