Friday, October 25, 2013

COURSERA: Free online lessons...

Hello all!
I haven't been able to write these days because I'm really busy.
But there is something I should have mentioned sometime ago, and it's about the online lessons I'm taking in Coursera.
 Coursera is an organization which is co-operating with many Universities, and is offering online lessons for free on many subjects. You can choose an easy and usually pleasant class or a harder one. It's up to you actually. There are hundreds of lessons going on now, and every now and then new ones are starting.
  I learned about Coursera from a friend who is taking classes for over a year now. Since I had no idea how it was working, so I thought of starting with something easy. So my first class was 'History of Rock Part.1', thinking also that probably I don't have to study as much, because I'm dealing with Rock music almost 30 years now, and I'm very familiar with the subject. Well, I was very wrong! hehehehe
 The University which offers these classes is the University of Rochester based in New York, and the teacher is Professor John Covach. I have to say he is giving a very interesting, informative and
pleasant class.
And here's how the whole system is working: Every class has a length of some weeks. (F.e History of Rock Part,1 was 7 weeks long). On every week the university is uploading some video lectures which you can download or watch online. Now, depends on the kind of class there is a possibility you might have some homework to do, or not. Every one or two weeks there is a test you have to take, and at the end of the course sometimes an overall test. There are also forums available with discussion groups, study groups etc... In general the whole thing is organized and pleasant.
  Speaking for myself, I just reached the 7th and last week of the course, and now it's the time to take the final exam, and then decide if I want to continue with part.2 or not.
  Concluding this post I have to say that I strongly recommend Coursera to everybody who might be interested in learning something new, even just for fun like me. And don't forget it's completely free!
If you want to take a look at the classes the subjects etc, here is the link: https://www.coursera.org/
Thanks for reading! :)

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