Lecture Videos : Berkeley vs MIT

I have finished today the second week's lecture videos in Saas - CS 169.1x by BerkeleyX. I must say my experience has been a rather disappointing one compared to edx's other online college course offered by MITx this time, 6.00x - Introduction to computer science and programming in Python.

First of all, the lecture videos were too many for only one week. There were three lectures discussing different topics with several videos each. Too much content to digest in one week. I understand that this is an advanced course but this does not mean that you have to put so much content that it take a whole lot of time to watch. Instead, what they could do is organize the lectures in smaller parts and put some of the to-learn concepts in the finger exercises. Learn by doing. But this is not happening and the reason is quite obvious to the to the students of Saas. The lectures are not designed for the online course but rather for the one that takes place in Berkeley's campus. When you design an online college course you don't just take a video of the college's class and put it online. This is what BerkeleyX is doing though. Both in CS 188 - Artificial Intelligence and in Saas, the lecture videos are designed in the same way. This makes it hard for the online course's students though as besides time-consuming, it also makes you feel like you are not the one this course is aiming at, that you do not get enough attention.

On the contrary, MITx seems to know better who the audience is and how to please it. the lectures are split in many small videos of 6-7 minutes each where you look at the professor's face talking to you directly. The finger exercises are also quite different. Firstly, they are more and secondly, they are better organised. They're not only multiple choice. they are more sophisticated, aiming not only at understanding the key concepts of the lectures but they also introduce new ones, making the learning experience interactive and certainly more interesting. 

Well, it seems that BerkeleyX wants to differentiate itself from from MITx and the other university-partners at edx, due to marketing and status policies. This shouldn't affect the students in a negative way though. It would certainly be helpful if they became more extroverted and show that they care for their students worldwide by making classes specially for them and their needs. Those MOOCs are introducing a new revolutionary learning experience but sometimes it seems like they don't have enough faith in it.

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Saas - Week 1

Ok. In time. Lets do Quiz 1. That was frustrating. I thought I had understood the key concepts of Ruby quite well but I was wrong (see this article). I managed to answer correctly most of the questions but had answered many ones wrong too so I had to study more to understand why I had them wrong. The course's wiki was very helpful. I found useful links about Regular Expressions and other concepts that I encountered for the first time. Also, major help was stackoverflow. We were only given one chance to answer each question in the quiz so I finished this one early! I had two and a half days to do the homework exercises. Oh, I am getting tired. This seems a lot of work.

I actually took a break and went for a walk with my friends after days of studying. I reserved it! It was my reward and the small push I needed to keep going. Those times you think again and again what you do and why you are doing it. I love those times. You get to take important decisions then. Well, I realised how much I loved this course and that I was looking forward to go back home and start the homework. You are probably thinking now that I have boring friends but I can assure you that that's not the case! It is just the passion for something new and exciting that drives you.

Back to homework! Oh no, regular expressions in the first exercise! One of the things I had wrong in the quiz. I have to understand very well how they work in order to pass this exercise. I can now see that the stuff did a good job. They chose exercises that force you to understand some key concepts in Ruby. They're not just playing around, that's for sure. It took a little time but actually it wasn't as difficult as I thought at first. This applies to all the exercises. As long as you understood the concept, writing the code wasn't too difficult. You had to be careful though. For example, in the second exercise we had to implement a "rock, paper, scissors" game. Easy, I thought. I wrote the code but it was too big and too slow so the autograder didn't accept it. It wasn't in time. I was angry in the beginning because I knew my code was correct and thought that due to the stuff's inability to make a good autograder i would lose valuable points. That was not the case. All students in the class should learn to write fast code as it is aimed for the web and is run in all sort of machines! This is part of the cloud philosophy.

Eventually I managed to do all the exercises and understand the concepts quite well. I want to thank the forum for the help. It was really valuable when I got stuck (it happened quite often!). Now I am ready for week 2 and Rails! This is gonna be a challenge! I am way out of my league in there. So let's see!

This is a screenshot of my progress! I will post one of these each week.

Saas progress - week 1

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I love you Codecademy!

Five days! That's all I have to learn Ruby and do my homework. So I decided to split it, two days to learn Ruby and three to take the quiz 1 and do the homework 1. The good thing about the last one is that I can submit my solution after the due date but it will receive a penalty of 25 %. Not much. In fact I don't really care if I am graded less as long as I understand the concepts and learn. I'm not taking this course for the certificate, I think of it as a reward for my efforts but the real certificate is the knowledge I will gain.

Lets learn Ruby! So where to start? Where else? Codecademy! I am not a complete beginner so I thought i will be able to follow the courses. Indeed! My brain still hurts but it was rewarding. I was working all day long for two days in a row and was able to complete the Codecademy class on Ruby. I am certainly not an expert now but it helped me remember the key concepts of programming. Also, Ruby looks a lot like Python which I am familiar with (took 6.00x on edx). Here is screenshot of my progress:

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Starting Saas

I'm not gonna lie to you. A week ago I didn't  even know what "Saas" meens and had never heard the word "Agile" before. Why did I enroll in a Saas class then? Well , I knew one thing, this course was about developing software for the web. That was enough to make me excited!

I have only taken (and successfully finished) one programming class before (see this article) and the language it used was python. I know nothing about Ruby which is used in this class. This can be a minor problem if I was an experienced programmer, but I'm not. So I have to learn Ruby fast to keep up with the class and do my homework in time. Also, I enrolled late and have only five days until the due date for week 1 's  homework. So how am I gonna make it? Interesting question, I think. And I know the answer: work, work, work ! And don't panic! There is no time to be anxious so let's get to work!

One good thing is that I am currently on my summer vacation so I can dedicate the whole day, if needed, to study for the course. And that is what I'm doing!

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Hello World!

Hello everyone! I have created this blog in order to keep track of my progress in edx as well as to inform you about the quality and the workload of various edx's online courses.

I discovered edx about a year ago, a little after the first course, 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics was offered by MITx in March 2012. I loved the idea! Courses offered online for free by the best universities in the world. At that time I was starting to teach myself a little programming in python but since I had no prior experience in programming or computer science at all, it seemed quite difficult. And then came 6.00x . Exactly what I needed : Introduction to computer science and programming in python by MITx ! It seemed like a gift. I wasted no time and enrolled at the class that was starting in the fall of 2012. What an experience ! I surely have learned tons of things I didn't expect. I am still very proud I managed to finish it and get the certificate of mastery. It was certainly a challenge. After that, I tried courses like CS188: Artificial Intelligence by BerkeleyX and 14.73x: The challenges of global poverty by MITx  and now I am taking CS169.1x: Software As A Service by BerkeleyX , but more on these later! It's time for me to introduce myself!

Well, besides being an Edx Student, I also study Architecture at university. I am a full time student as you see! My passion for architecture and computational design is what inspired me to learn programming at first. So my initial goal was to learn an easy programming language that could help me advance my skills. Indeed, I learned python, thanks to edx, and that helped me a lot with my university projects. I could have stopped there but another passion started to grow inside me, the passion for programming itself! You probably have figured that out already from the list of courses I have attended. Well, that's enough talking about me! You will have the chance to know me better through my posts!

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