A Stanford education (free!)
Stanford University offered three of their most popular computer science courses to the public this fall, online for free. The courses were so popular that Stanford’s doing it again in January.
This time they’re offering 7 computer science courses:
Computer Science 101 http://www.cs101-class.org/
Machine Learning (one of the offerings this past fall) http://jan2012.ml-class.org/
Software as a Service http://www.saas-class.org/
Human-Computer Interaction http://www.hci-class.org/
Natural Language Processing http://www.nlp-class.org/
Game Theory http://www.game-theory-class.org/
Probabilistic Graphical Models http://www.pgm-class.org/
Cryptography http://www.crypto-class.org/
And two entrepreneurship courses:
The Lean Launchpad http://www.launchpad-class.org/
Technology Entrepreneurship http://www.venture-class.org/
No tuition, no textbooks, no set class times (students get a week to complete the assignments). The only downside is that you probably don’t have time to do them all.
I know which ones I’ll be signing up for, how about you?
Molly
About the author
Written by Dale J. Stephens
Author at Perigee/Penguin of HACKING YOUR EDUCATION. 19-year-old Thiel Fellow. Top 20 under 20. Leader of the UnCollege movement. Loves deviant attitudes, cacao nibs, and frequent flyer miles.
Just a note - it is not http://www.venture-class.org but http://www.venture-lab.org instead
Hi All.., i wanted to know whether is there any certification fees..??(apart from admission fee or course fee, which is free). how do we get the certificate after completing the course.?
I'm almost 60 and dealing with several physical limits I i would like to learn to interface devices (mice keyboards,etc) to help others with similar limits' only programing I,ve had was Basic on the fantastic C64 and later it was the Amiga' i sure miss them. lol
I'm interested on software as a service. How can we enroll.
As a technical writer, I'm very interested in the course on Human-Computer interaction. However, I have no programming background. Is there any harm in auditing (for lack of a better word) the course and not sweating the programming pieces?
Thanks!
David
Also if you you are looking for engineering courses ... NPTEL is awesome initiative too (its from top 10 universities of india like IIT's which are ranked in top 50 for engineering ).. They alredy have over 300 courses there..
does this program has some kind of certification ? I mean if you pass the course then do they recognize as you have done courses?
sonajeroshan Yeah, you get a certificate of completion at the end, with some sort of summary about your performance in the homeworks and exams. In the case of the AI class this sem, the FAQs have this listed:"Online students will receive a statement of accomplishment signed by the instructors with their name and rank within the online class."
i am intrested with entrepreneurship
Does anyone know if there is a time limit to when one has to sign up? Also, anyone who has done these classes before have any idea how many I'd be able to do at a time?
Jakub Dolecki
I've been doing the ai-class, and while it has been very good to be doing it every week, I find that I am mostly doing it on weekends. It would take about an hour to an hour and a half (better to leave more than 2, including minor breaks) per topic, with 2 topics per week and homework. In essence, we're talking about 4-5 hours for a non-programming class. I suspect those requiring programming would take a fair bit longer, so you should factor that in. I'm taking the 2 entrepreneurship classes next semester, as my programming skills are woefully rusty, as well as due to the fact that my upcoming job applications will be more business-oriented!
All in all, a wonderful idea from Stanford, and I look forward to learning more from this programme as it goes along :)
Jakub Dolecki I have been doing three classes at the same time (ai-class,db-class,ml-class) and can tell you that it is a lot, especially if you work full time and have a family. I am a software engineer and even though my mathematic and CS background is solid, expect to spend at least 10 hours a week per course.
There is also http://www.db-class.org. :)
Oops, I also forgot https://www.ai-class.com/. Haha. Stanford is doing awesome stuff disrupting education. :)
DarylYeo Is there any which is about programming for beginners?? I know computers no idea about programming.
GulitDarylYeo Yes, there is, the Computer Science 101 class is for beginners: http://www.cs101-class.org/
DarylYeo yes but isn't it more about what is computer,What is hardware, software,internet and all..I do already know that I want to learn more like PHP or Java or Python something like that
Gulit If you want to learn basic beginning programming, there are a few sites on http://www.cs101-class.org/ which you can refer to like http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ and http://codingbat.com/ for Python. You can also go to this great site Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com for JavaScript at the moment and http://rubymonk.com/ for Ruby. They are all pretty good sites to learn programming.
I'm not sure if Stanford has any online introductory programming courses but my school Carnegie Mellon University has past introduction of the principles of computing courses you can refer to and perhaps self teach yourself programming: http://www.kosbie.net/cmu/fall-10/15-110/.
Hope this helps. :)
DarylYeo yes but what I was looking more into is any university providing course like that it will help me learn + something useful to add in my resume too. do you know any other university providing program like that? Stanford itself had one they have videos of it.. but it was for fall maybe
Gulit Sorry, I do not know of such a service. I don't think Stanford or CMU has something like that. MIT has it's own open courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/. These schools all have resources but no classes which give you the type of certification you are looking for. Your best bet would be http://www.cs101-class.org/ since they also have some programming assignments and teach you the fundamentals of Computer Science.
GulitDarylYeo try this site http://www.pythonlearn.com/ it's hosted by one of my old profs at the Uni of MI School of Info. Dr. Chuck is amazing!
A wonderful initiative to promote access to educational development free of charge on line!
A friend of mine is taking the machine learning course. He loves it.
I want to join online petroleum engineering courses from standford unversity is it free and possible for me.
I Know basic internet and all..I do internet marketing/SEO for a company..Which one will be most effective for me..any suggestions??
I'm really very curious -- do these courses have any accessibility for the deaf? For that matter what about UnCollege's own stuff? Transcripts, captions, anything?
browneyedgirl65 the Stanford AI class has closed captions in multiple languages, I assume the rest will also as the experiment is to offer free education to as many people as possible
Are these for credit?
AllenVaughn They're to learn! But I believe if you go to Stanford you do get some kind of credit. If you don't you get a qualification but no standard qualification but a certificate from Stanford.
AllenVaughn They are not for actual college credit. You do get a badge upon completion that is verified by Stanford. More info about it here https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges
yonemitsuAllenVaughn The Big Elephant in the room ehe..? Your question raises a lot of issues for Institutions and the mouths that they feed. Why are certifications held so tightly ? It is almost impossible to get credit for non matriculants now. I know what I need to learn, but every school I applied to wanted me to become part of their BS or MS program,. I have an MS. All I know is that in the current economic environment, we need to retrain a lot of post BS, post MS and post PhD people who can't go back to school for Chem, Molecular Bio etc. for credit are prevented..
BTW I highly recommend Prof Ng's course as a basic prep for a more math oriented ML course. And no programming is not only about logic. You got to know a lot more than logic esp in ML or BioInformatics.
Harvard seems to be following suit!
AndrewBrackin Source? During my time there, very few classes were publicly available for free.
This is amazing! I hope more colleges follow suit. I'd love to take these classes, but I'm not based enough in math to take the chance.
daranto10 Programming is much more about logic than math. I'd recommend giving 101 a shot!
So no one knows for sure if these count as college credits (or can be transferred in some way if a B & M college education is pursued? )... Forrest O daranto10
JonathanMcForrest O I have no idea. I'm currently in an MA program... but I wouldn't want these to count for credit, since there are so many classes I want to take for my program!
It says that upon completion you get a "certificate" or something. So, I'd assume there is no credit for taking these classes.
JonathanMc
They don't count towards any college credit because there is no record that you have ever attended the school. You can however list this as an accomplishment in your resume, and if you choose to take Computer Science or what not, then you can challenge the Final exam and move on to the next class without wasting time on the former.
Forrest O That seems like it'd be too easy for me! I looked at the about section for it, and it was like, "Welcome to the internet." :/
daranto10Forrest O
Umm... I think it just meant that the course includes brief overview of the basics of computing. I'm fairly certain that an intro to Comp Sci class wouldn't be focusing on that. Comp Sci is about learning how to design and implement good computer programs, not about what a computer is or how to use one.
Dale J. Stephens is a Penguin author, Thiel Fellow, and education activist. He lives in San Francisco, California.
[...] Posted on Nov 21, 2011 in EHS Blog, Environmental, Health and Safety News | 0 comments “UnCollege has the lowdown on how to get yourself a free Computer Science education at Stanford. No tuition, no textbooks, no set class times (students get a week to complete the assignments). Sign-up here.” [...]