A Brief List of MOOCs | Thomas Kaminsky

A lot of people right now seem to be interested in self-studying course material, and I think that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a great way to organize your learning. We’re living in a sort of golden age for free online education, but it can be pretty difficult to navigate all of your options. Here I lay out a sort of guide for the types of online courses that I’ve encountered, what I understand as the strengths and limitations of each type, and some good first courses to get started with online learning.

The Official Ones

Perhaps the gold standard for MOOCs are those that re-upload college-level courses in their (near) entirety. These have the benefit of being credentialed by some big-name institutions and being really well-organized, but a lot of them don’t take advantage of their online formats, and it can still be a struggle to engage with them because there is so much less explicit feedback than in an in-person class.

A lot of them also have annoying, optional `certificate’ programs, which seem to me like a bit of a waste of money. I’m not sure that a lot of employers value a certified online course as much as, say, a course taken at a university or technical school, so I’d usually stick to auditing it for free instead. I describe a few of the major sites below:

MIT OpenCourseWare

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is probably my favorite website in general for taking online courses. They have a large list of offerings, most of which are really well-documented, including problem sets, exams, and sections.

However, it definitely has a few issues. Though there are over 1,200 courses listed at the time of writing, only 250 or so have lecture videos, with the rest mostly being lecture notes. To save yourself some pain, just filter for courses with recordings to begin with. I’ve also found that, though some courses are really beautifully recorded, other videos are a little bad—I sometimes find it hard to read the board, especially in older courses.

The videos also aren’t uniformly distributed across subjects. Unsurprisingly, most of the offerings are in Computer Science, followed by math and physics. So if you’re interested in other one of these neglected fields, especially in the social sciences or humantities, this might not be the platform for you.

Here are some example courses that I think do a great job:

MIT Open Learning Library

OLL is a sort of super-OCW, in that a lot of these courses are, or used to be, listed on OCW. They tend to be more polished and better-utilize online tools, but this also can result in a less rigorous experience, especially where homework is concerned. Still, the autograders and professionally-recorded lectures make the platform a really great way to have an organized experience.

It also has a strange relationship with EdX—like half of the courses are listed there as well, and so it isn’t always obvious how to

Here are some courses that you might be interested in:

Coursera

One of the first massive repositories for online courses, Coursera has perhaps the largest catalog of college-level courses for free online. Like OLL, it has a certificate program that you can buy if you really want to, but you can learn basically everything for free. It also has a wider variety of courses than OCW, and they are taught by a huge number of schools, rather than just MIT.

The website was created by professors at Stanford, so it has especially high-quality courses from west-coast schools. However, they also allow courses to be uploaded by any school, or even by companies, I’ve noticed that they vary a ton in quality. Some of the courses uploaded by companies, in particular, seem more like lessons in pro-tech jargon than useful college-level courses, so use at your own risk. They’ve also leaned really hard into certifications and ‘tracks’ which are expensive and make bold claims about ‘skilling-up’, which I find slightly overhyped.

Still, there are a lot of interesting courses on offer. Here are a few:

Cryptography I (Stanford)
Introduction to Calculus (University of Sydney)
Greek and Roman Mythology (UPenn)
Game Theory (Stanford)

edX

edX was Harvard and MIT’s answer to Coursera in 2012. It is very similar to Coursera and OLL in structure

In terms of cons, it suffers at times from a lack of rigor, though some courses, like the incredible CS50X, manage to be surprisingly similar to their in-person variants. Also, because they allow courses to be uploaded by any school, or even by companies, I’ve noticed that courses vary a ton in quality. Some of the courses uploaded by companies, in particular, seem more like lessons in pro-tech jargon than useful college-level courses.

Here are some good courses to try out:

CS50: Introduction to Computer Science (Harvard)
A Global History of Architecture (MIT)
Fundamentals of Neuroscience (Harvard)
The Science of Happiness (Berkeley)

The Independent Websites

There also exist a number of courses offered by parties unaffiliated with Universities. Lots of the big names in this category—Udemy, MasterClass, etc.—aren’t free, so I haven’t tried them.

Still, there are a few I’d recommend:

Khan Academy

By far the msot important online learning resource for High Schoolers, Sal Khan created a really incredible resource as far back as 2008. It’s grown into a large and exciting platform, though it focuses more on course material for younger students, rather than advanced courses. Still, if you want to study a course that you missed in high school, this is probably the place I’d start.

Codecademy

Codecademy is one of the classic coding education websites, and it’s still a great way for people with no coding experience to get their feet wet. The courses are really well-organized, and you can do everything online without having to worry about setup on your computer, which can be a pain in other computer science courses.

Still, it’s not a perfect service. I’ve found that more and more courses are getting locked behind paywalls, and there aren’t great ways to get really deep technical understanding. I’d think of the courses as quick introductions to spark your interest and learn the basic syntax of whatever language you’re interested in, but you’ll eventually need to take a more involved course, or start slogging through documentation.

The Overachievers

Very rarely, a course independently uploads all of its materials, independent of a larger platform. In my experience, these tend to be really high in quality, so if you find them, you’ll probably have a pretty good time. Still, as far as I know, there isn’t a great way to search for these sorts of courses, so it may be hard to find one you’re looking for.

They also tend to be exclusive to computer science and related fields, for obvious reasons. Finally, if you are interested in a certificate for any reason, I doubt that these programs can give you one. Still, I think they’re a great option.

Here are some of my favorites:

6.4210: Robotic Manipulation (MIT)
CS 3110: Data Structures and Functional Programming (Cornell)
Spinning Up in Deep RL (OpenAI)

Conclusion

I hope this was helpful! Feel free to send me any other platforms that you find success with, or any thoughts about the list.

—Thomas