Harvard’s Free Computer Science Course Teaches You to Code in 12 Weeks

in Harvard, How to Learn for Free, MOOCs, Technology | March 27th, 2014

At the begin­ning of last year, we wrote about CS50, Harvard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Com­put­er Sci­ence course, taught by Pro­fes­sor David Malan. Today, we bring you the updat­ed ver­sion of the class, filmed through­out the past semes­ter at Har­vard. Why revis­it an updat­ed ver­sion of the same class a year lat­er? For one thing, the mate­r­i­al has been updat­ed. And, as you can tell by the rous­ing recep­tion Malan receives from the audi­ence at the start of the first lec­ture (above), Malan is kind of a big deal. From his open­ing boom of “This is CS50,” Malan imme­di­ate­ly comes off as an unusu­al­ly charis­mat­ic pro­fes­sor. He offers what might just be the most engag­ing online class you’ve ever seen.

So what does this charis­mat­ic com­put­er sci­en­tist cov­er over three months? An impres­sive­ly large amount of infor­ma­tion about cod­ing. Malan builds the course from the ground up, and begins by describ­ing how tran­sis­tors are employed to trans­mit infor­ma­tion with­in com­put­ers. From then on, he out­lines a vast amount of com­put­er sci­ence in high­ly acces­si­ble lan­guage. This will almost undoubt­ed­ly be the clear­est pre­sen­ta­tion of top­ics like “com­mand-line argu­ments,” “cryp­tog­ra­phy,” and “dynam­ic mem­o­ry allo­ca­tion” that you’re like­ly to hear.

The class videos are avail­able on iTune­sU, YouTube, and in audio, 1080p HD video, and text tran­script form on a crisp course web­site. The course may also be accessed through edX, Har­vard and MIT’s MOOC plat­form, which allows users to receive a cer­tifi­cate upon com­ple­tion. It’s easy to tell that Malan and his team have gone above and beyond the require­ments of cre­at­ing a help­ful intro­duc­tion to com­put­er sci­ence. They deliv­er an astound­ing­ly easy-to-grasp primer on a daunt­ing top­ic.

For oth­er Comp­Sci class­es taught by David Malan, check out our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence cours­es, part of our larg­er list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Cod­ing Togeth­er

 

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The President of Northwestern University Predicts Online Learning … in 1934!

in History, MOOCs | January 31st, 2014

1934 predictions

One of our most pop­u­lar posts this year cen­tered around a pre­scient set of pre­dic­tions that Isaac Asi­mov made for 2014, way back in 1964. Asi­mov, how­ev­er, wasn’t the only one whose vision of the future seems to have been real­ized.

The web site Pale­o­fu­ture fea­tures a 1934 issue of Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics mag­a­zine, where North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Wal­ter Dill Scott made some far­sight­ed pro­nounce­ments of his own. Scott believed that the phys­i­cal col­lege cam­pus would no longer need to be a lynch­pin for edu­ca­tion, and that stu­dents could learn by way of radio and pic­tures. Fax machines and tele­vi­sions would allow stu­dents to access lec­ture mate­ri­als world­wide, and ensure that researchers could con­duct their research remote­ly. He also fig­ured that we’d all end up com­mut­ing by planes. Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics wrote:

The uni­ver­si­ty of twen­ty-five years from now will be a dif­fer­ent look­ing place, says Pres­i­dent Scott of North­west­ern. Instead of con­cen­trat­ing fac­ul­ty and stu­dents around a cam­pus, they will “com­mute” by air, and the uni­ver­si­ty will be sur­round­ed by air­ports and hangars. The course will be car­ried on, to a large extent, by radio and pic­tures. Fac­sim­i­le broad­cast­ing and tele­vi­sion will enlarge great­ly the range of a library; and research may be car­ried on by schol­ars at great dis­tances.

Air­ports and hangars aside, Scott’s con­jec­tures hit pret­ty close to home. While fax machines and radio may have been sup­plant­ed by the Inter­net, the essence of our edu­ca­tion­al advance­ments is the same: uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents can often lis­ten to lec­tures and com­plete assign­ments online, spend­ing only a few short face-to-face hours in the class­room. Oth­er times, class­es may be whol­ly avail­able online, and stu­dents may nev­er step foot on cam­pus alto­geth­er. Schol­ars, too, can trawl through data­bas­es like JSTOR and PsycIN­FO with­out get­ting out of bed, con­duct­ing research as they trav­el.

In fact, today almost any­one can have access to uni­ver­si­ty knowl­edge. Feel like tak­ing a Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship class offered by Stan­ford, or learn about Walt Whit­man, cour­tesy of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa? Noth­ing sim­pler! Mas­sive Open Online cours­es (MOOCs) are pro­lif­er­at­ing, and you can down­load audio & video lec­tures from top tier uni­ver­si­ties. Vis­it our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es to see what we mean.

In the end, it’s a good thing Scott was right. Oth­er­wise, there’d be no Open Cul­ture.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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MOOC Providers Take Flight in Britain and Germany: Introducing Future Learn and Iversity

in MOOCs, Online Courses | October 16th, 2013

They may be a lit­tle late to the MOOC par­ty, but two new­ly-launched Euro­pean open course plat­forms might still be able to carve out a niche.

Cours­era and edX, the two main play­ers in the US at this point, have been up and run­ning for almost 18 months. And although both ven­tures have a long list of inter­na­tion­al part­ners, the ris­ing cost of high­er edu­ca­tion is build­ing inter­est in MOOCs in Europe and the UK. The founders of new Euro­pean plat­forms  — Future Learn in the UK, and iver­si­ty in Ger­many — are bet­ting they can still make head­way in an increas­ing­ly crowd­ed mar­ket.

A sub­sidiary of the British Open Uni­ver­si­ty, Future Learn is in its beta stage, but it’s already boast­ing part­ner­ships with uni­ver­si­ties across Britain, Ire­land, and Aus­tralia. And come this Novem­ber, it will be rolling out cours­es across mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines. Take for exam­ple:

Mean­while Berlin-based start­up iver­si­ty recent­ly relaunched itself as a MOOC plat­form. This week, iversity’s first six cours­es begin. Four are in Ger­man and two are in Eng­lish: Con­tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture and Dark Mat­ter in Galax­ies. A total of 115,000 stu­dents are cur­rent­ly enrolled.

Future Learn and iver­si­ty both seem to be aimed at audi­ences who are rel­a­tive­ly new to the MOOC con­cept. Both sites take care to explain what MOOCs are in very sim­ple terms—which may be a smart strat­e­gy for busi­ness­es set­ting out to con­vince Europe and Britain that the MOOC trend is for real.

You can find all cours­es by Future Learn and iver­si­ty list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of 600+ MOOCs from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs) Go Inter­na­tion­al

625 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates)

The Big Prob­lem for MOOCs Visu­al­ized

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. 

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Google & edX to Create MOOC.Org: An Open Source Platform For Creating Your Own MOOC

in Google, Harvard, MIT, MOOCs | September 11th, 2013

mooc org

Almost exact­ly a year ago, we told you about Google’s release of Course Builder, an open source plat­form that would let you build your own online courses/MOOCs for free. This week, Google has a new announce­ment: it’s join­ing forces with edX, (the MOOC provider led by Har­vard and MIT), to work on a new open source plat­form called MOOC.org. The new ser­vice will go live in the first half of 2014. And it will allow “any aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion, busi­ness and indi­vid­ual to cre­ate and host online cours­es.” This will give inno­v­a­tive edu­ca­tors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put a MOOC online with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly mak­ing a steep invest­ment in a course. (When added all up, the costs can oth­er­wise be enor­mous.) If MOOC.org sounds of inter­est to you, you can put your name on a wait­ing list, and they’ll con­tact you when the ser­vice launch­es next year.

Mean­while, let me men­tion that 125 MOOCs will be launch­ing between now and the end of Octo­ber. To see a full list, vis­it or our col­lec­tion of 625 MOOCs/Certificate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. You’ll find many inter­est­ing titles on the list — His­to­ry of Chi­nese Archi­tec­ture: Part 1; Søren Kierkegaard – Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, Irony and the Cri­sis of Moder­ni­ty; Dark Mat­ter in Galax­ies: The Last Mys­tery, and Explor­ing Engi­neer­ing, just to name a few. If you have ques­tions about what MOOCs are all about, please see our new MOOC FAQ.

via The Chron­i­cle of High­er Ed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Releas­es “Course Builder,” an Open Source Plat­form for Build­ing Your Own Big Online Cours­es

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs) World­wide

Stephen Col­bert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

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Stephen Colbert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

in Comedy, MIT, MOOCs | July 31st, 2013

Last week Anant Agar­w­al, Pres­i­dent of edX (the MOOC con­sor­tium launched by Har­vard and MIT), paid a vis­it to The Col­bert Report. And it did­n’t take long for the host, the one and only Stephen Col­bert, to ask fun­ny but unmis­tak­ably prob­ing ques­tions about the advent of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es. “I don’t under­stand. You’re in the knowl­edge busi­ness in a uni­ver­si­ty. Let’s say I had a shoe store, ok, and then I hired you to work at my shoe store. And you said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s give the shoes away for free.’ I would fire you and then prob­a­bly throw shoes at your head.” In oth­er words, why would uni­ver­si­ties dis­rupt them­selves and give edu­ca­tion away at no cost? Where’s the san­i­ty in that?  If you have five min­utes, you can watch Agar­wal’s response and get a few laughs along the way. And if you’re ready to take a MOOC, then dive into our col­lec­tion of 550 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. 120 new cours­es will be start­ing in August and Sep­tem­ber alone.

via The Har­vard Crim­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es World­wide

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Seven New Courses Coming from the School of Open: Sign Up Today

in MOOCs, Online Courses | July 24th, 2013

school of open logoThe School of Open is offer­ing its sec­ond round of free, facil­i­tat­ed, online cours­es. Through August 4, you can sign up for 7 cours­es on open sci­ence, col­lab­o­ra­tive work­shop design, open edu­ca­tion­al resources, copy­right for edu­ca­tors, Wikipedia, CC licens­es, and more. Cours­es will start after the first week of August and run for 3 to 7 weeks, depend­ing on the course top­ic and orga­niz­er. All cours­es will offer badges for recog­ni­tion of skills and/or course com­ple­tion as part of P2PU’s badges pilot. Here’s a list of the upcom­ing cours­es, all of which have been added to our com­pre­hen­sive list of MOOCs.

If you are too busy to take a course this time around, you can sign up to be noti­fied for the next round of facil­i­tat­ed cours­es, or take a stand-alone course at your own pace, at any time. All cours­es are free and open to take and re-use under the Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Share­Alike license.

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An Introduction to Great Economists — Adam Smith, the Physiocrats & More — Presented in New MOOC

in Economics, MOOCs | May 7th, 2013

Last fall, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors from George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched MRUni­ver­si­ty, a MOOC plat­form that brings eco­nom­ics cours­es to the larg­er world. (If Tyler Cowen’s name sounds famil­iar, it’s prob­a­bly because you’re already famil­iar with his blog Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion or his “Eco­nom­ic Scene” col­umn for the New York Times.) Fast for­ward to this spring, and MRUni­ver­si­ty now offers cours­es on The Euro­zone Cri­sis, Mex­i­co’s Econ­o­my, The Amer­i­can Hous­ing Finance Sys­tem, and, as of this month, The Great Econ­o­mists. The short course descrip­tion for Great Econ­o­mists: Clas­si­cal Eco­nom­ics and its Fore­run­ners reads:

Who were the first eco­nom­ic thinkers? What are the very ori­gins of eco­nom­ic thought? What did ear­li­er econ­o­mists under­stand but has been lost to the mod­ern world? Why is Adam Smith the great­est econ­o­mist of all time? How did the eco­nom­ic issues of the 18th and 19th cen­turies shape the thoughts of the clas­si­cal econ­o­mists? This class, which cov­ers the his­to­ry of eco­nom­ic thought up until the “Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion” in the 1870s, will answer all of these ques­tions and many oth­ers.

The course starts with Galileo and the the­o­ry of val­ue; touch­es on Mon­tesquieu and Man­dev­ille; offers to an intro­duc­tion to Mer­can­til­ism and the Phys­iocrats, and then real­ly comes to focus on David Hume and most­ly Adam Smith and his clas­sic trea­tise, The Wealth of Nations (find it in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks), before turn­ing to lat­er thinkers and peri­ods.

You can sign up for The Great Econ­o­mists here. And it will be added to our list of 300 MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

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History of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix & More

in MOOCs, Music | April 8th, 2013

Here’s some­thing I can get pret­ty jazzed about. Er, maybe that’s not quite the right verb. But close enough.…

On May 13, the East­man School of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester will launch the first of two MOOCs that will trace the his­to­ry of rock music. Taught by John Cov­ach, a pro­fes­sor of music the­o­ry, The His­to­ry of Rock, Part One will revis­it the 1950s and 1960s, the hal­cy­on days of rock ’n’ roll, which gave us the music of Elvis Pres­ley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spec­tor, Bob Dylan, the Bea­t­les, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hen­drix, Cream, and oth­er bands. The course will focus on the music itself, the cul­tur­al con­text from which rock emerged, and how changes in the music busi­ness and music tech­nol­o­gy shaped this new musi­cal form. The sec­ond course (sched­uled to start on July 8) will move for­ward to the 1970, 80s and 90s and cov­er the music of Led Zep­pelin, the All­man Broth­ers, Car­ole King, Bob Mar­ley, the Sex Pis­tols, Don­na Sum­mer, Michael Jack­son, Madon­na, Prince, Metal­li­ca, Run-DMC, Nir­vana, and oth­er artists. Stu­dents who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the course will receive a “State­ment of Accom­plish­ment” signed by the instruc­tor.

Oth­er music cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties include Intro­duc­tion to Gui­tar and Intro­duc­tion to Impro­vi­sa­tion. They’re both cre­at­ed by the Berklee Col­lege of Music and start on April 22.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Carnegie Hall MOOC Will Teach You How to Lis­ten to Orches­tras (Free)

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