Geek Philosophy

For the past month or so I’ve been taking part in two free computer science courses offered online by Stanford – Machine Learning and Introduction to Databases. They’re both great, presenting material at about a second or third year undergraduate level (though not a full semester’s worth, and often a bit light on the math), with full video lectures and graded assignments. I would have also loved to do the class on Artificial Intelligence, but at the time the video lectures were not download-able, and I watch the the vast majority of the lectures during my commute. It’s too late to sign up for these courses, so I won’t spend too much time writing about them here – I plan to do a full write up of at least the Machine Learning course after it’s complete.

What may be of interest to my readers is that, starting in January, Stanford is offering several other courses with the same online format. Here are the ones that I’ve seen so far:

• Software Engineering for SaaS
• Human-Computer Interface
• Natural Language Processing
• Game Theory
• Probabilistic Graphic Models
• The Lean Launchpad

I certainly won’t have the free time to take all of them (my commute is not that long), but I’ve signed up for all of them to at least have a look at the material. If they’re structured like the courses I’m currently taking, completing the “advanced” track of any of these (which means doing quizzes, exams, and programming assignments) gets you a certificate of completion from the instructor. Hopefully Stanford will start working with Mozilla, specifically their Open Badges initiative, and continue to push the boundaries of online education and credentialing.

Are you taking any of the current courses? Do any of next term’s look interesting to you? Leave a comment!