Online Courses: (Often) Free and Just Awesome!

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” -Socrates.

[UPDATED Mar. 2021]

Acquiring knowledge has been a hobby of mine since 4th grade, so it's no surprise that I'm the proverbial "kid in the candy store" when it comes to online courses! As of writing, I have followed over 20 so far, and trying to decide what the next one will be...

Utopia or Dystopia?

You ever find yourself imagining the future, and wondering whether it'll turn out to be “utopian” or “dystopian”?
Well, the state of higher education in the United States is decisively dystopian, with its absurdly ballooned costs and runaway student loans (a “bubble” that may burst sooner or later, mark my words!), BUT there’s a counterpoint that is decisively utopian, namely the explosive rise of free online courses 😊

Here’s a brief 2012 Ted talk about the rise of free online courses, dated but still of interest.
The gist of that TED talk is that online learning has come a long way from its early days. While some courses are simply a video recording of lectures, others offer optional quizzes, discussion forums, graded papers, certificates, etc.

Links to the Free Online Courses

For actual courses, check out some of the providers. The ones I’ve had positive personal experience with include:

Khan Academy
MIT online courses

Others I know of – but haven’t tried myself – include:

Alison.com

A place I heard about, but have no direct experience with personally, is a fully accredited – and virtually free – university that offers Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees in a handful of fields, incl. Computer Science, Health Science and Business Administration, as well as an MBA program:

University of the People

Great Courses, but Organizations that are Questionable/Sketchy/Incredibly Annoying

I'm generally in favor of the increasingly-common "freemium" model, whereby the courses are free but "certificates" and the like require payment.

However, some organizations are too aggressive in their up-sell, and at times engage in questionable/sketchy practices - such as making past courses just disappear, or locking you out of them!

Sadly, I had to relocate to this category:

Coursera
I have taken good courses from them in the past, but cannot recommend them at the moment, because at times they inactivate and hide past courses. Beware that your favorite course could disappear at any time, even while you're in the middle of taking it! I contacted customer support, but instead of an answer, I got a marketing pitch; further complaining on my part failed to get them to release a copy of a fabulous course that to my chagrin they've made disappear!
Avoid Coursera, if you can.... If you can't, be on high alert : your course could disappear at any moment, without notice; consider downloading everything, including the videos, if you really like the course
[Mar. 2021 UPDATE] Edx
While in the middle of taking a course, it kept pestering me that all access would be lost on that particular course, unless I upgraded to a paid certificate program.
When that date arrived, I simply created a new account, and resumed the course where I had left off - with a "fresh start" and a new date it now pesters me about. Khan Academy, are you trying to emulate the obnoxious side of Coursera?? I emailed them about this, but received no answer.
On a side note, I find the navigation on EdX to be rather confusing.

Organizations, if you want to charge for courses, charge. But please don't be slimy about it!

Not to Overlook: Modestly-Priced Courses

Several exists, but in a special category by itself is:

The Great Courses Plus

The “Great Courses” offerings aren’t free, and in fact used to be rather expensive, but the company re-invented itself as “The Great Courses PLUS”: with a modest subscription price, it’s “all-you-can-watch” from a fairly large offerings (think Netflix streamed.)

I used to think that paid courses were passé in this age of free online courses, but the modest monthly cost of The Great Courses Plus, their consistently superb professors & production value, and their fairly wide-ranging offerings make it worthwhile. Lectures are typically in very “bite-size” 30-minute segments.
Something I especially like about their format is their intermediate level, typically well beyond a good documentary (or even a series of documentaries) but less involved than a full-fledged college course. That’s perfect for someone like me, who often finds documentaries too elementary, but doesn’t always have the time or desire to plunge into full-fledged college-level courses. Over the years, I have taken 22 of their courses so far!

Specialty Modestly-Priced Courses

On occasion I come across some, but have no direct knowledge of any. For example, ContinuEd offers specialized courses in subjects such as Audiology, Speech-Language Therapy and Early Childhood Ed for $99/yr.

What are Online Classes?

Some of the above organizations, such as coursera.org and edx.org, are aggregators of courses from various sources. Some, such KhanAcademy.org and The Great Courses Plus, seem to design their own curriculum. Others, such as MIT, are individual universities.

Older courses are simply videotaped lectures. But newer courses are made-for-video, and often include optional homework and many other extras, such as quizzes, discussion forums, graded papers, certificates.
Some are archived classes (already took place, but you can take them at your own time), while others are real-time (but you can fall behind if you want.)
Some are targeted to people who simply love learning – the Great Courses Plus is a perfect example of that – while others are targeted to college students, or high-school students, etc.

Alternatives or Supplement to College?

Are you thinking of going (back) to college? Or just thirsty for knowledge?
First, you might want to check out the many excellent free online courses, especially before you enslave yourself to pay out-of-your-nose for absurdly high tuition!

You might be able to get college transfer credits or a certificate of completion, if that matters to you… Some courses offer certificates upon request – if you complete the homework and other requirements. I don’t know how transferable the credits are… and it’s probably going to be a hot issue in flux for some years to come… but, if you acquire knowledge in any manner, you can perhaps use it to get college credit by exam. (Check with your school, of course.)
Fully-accredited online schools, such as University of the People, also seem to be making their appearance – though I’m seeing limited choices so far.
I certainly don’t advocate replacing schools with online learning… but the latter can serve many great roles. In particular, they’re perfect for someone like me who loves learning just for the pleasure of knowledge, and has already done college and graduate school.

Are Online Courses Right for You?

Of course, online courses require one to be self-directed. It’s a personality trait that comes naturally to some people. Personally, I knew that about myself from a young age – I was reading Einstein’s popular science books on Relativity in elementary school, lol. But what if being self-directed isn’t your strong suit? I suppose it might be cost-effective to hire a P/T tutor, or a few different tutors, to help give you direction and discipline (maybe also hire a Dominatrix on the side??), as well as help with course materials.

Free Online Courses Rock!

In short, enjoy them casually as in-depth documentaries… or take them seriously as college courses… or anything in-between!
Shop around for fascinating subjects and awesome profs, from all over the country and abroad! Fill up gaps in your knowledge, venture into new horizons…
And nothing beats the pleasure of pausing or “firing” the prof, or watching in bed in your pajama!

Examples of Excellent Courses

As I said, I feel like the proverbial kid in the candy store! I have taken ~~about 20~~ [Jan. 2021 update: 27] online courses so far, just for fun and Love of Knowledge.

I list and briefly describe them in a separate blog entry : most have trailers; check them out, and maybe some will catch your fancy! Physics, History, Earth Sciences, Finance, Music, Math, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Psychology, etc...

Comments

Discussing Neuroscience with ChatGPT

UPDATED Apr. 2023 - I'm excited by ChatGPT 's possibilities in terms of facilitating advanced learning . For example, I got enlightening answers to questions that I had confronted when I first studied neuroscience. The examples below are taken from a very recent session I had with ChatGPT (mid Jan. 2023.) Source: https://neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com In case you're not familiar with ChatGPT, it's a very sophisticated "chatbot" - though, if you call it that way, it'll correct you! 'I am not a "chatbot", I am a language model, a sophisticated type of AI algorithm trained on vast amounts of text data to generate human-like text'. For a high-level explanation of how ChatGPT actually works - which also gives immense insight into its weaknesses, there's an excellent late Jan. 2023 talk by Stephen Wolfram, the brilliant author of the Mathematica software and of Wolfram Alpha , a product that could be combined with ChatGPT to imp

Using Schema in Graph Databases such as Neo4j

UPDATED Feb. 2024 - Graph databases have an easygoing laissez-faire attitude: "express yourself (almost) however you want"... By contrast, relational databases come across with an attitude like a micro-manager: "my way or the highway"... Is there a way to take the best of both worlds and distance oneself from their respective excesses, as best suited for one's needs? A way to marry the flexibility of Graph Databases and the discipline of Relational Databases? This article is part 5 of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j Let's Get Concrete Consider a simple scenario with scientific data such as the Sample, Experiment, Study, Run Result , where Samples are used in Experiments, and where Experiments are part of Studies and produce Run Results. That’s all very easy and intuitive to represent and store in a Labeled Graph Database such as Neo4j . For example, a rough draft might go like this: The “labels” (black tags) represent

Graph Databases (Neo4j) - a revolution in modeling the real world!

UPDATED Oct. 2023 - I was "married" to Relational Databases for many years... and it was a good "relationship" full of love and productivity - but SOMETHING WAS MISSING! Let me backtrack. In college, I got a hint of the "pre-relational database" days... Mercifully, that was largely before my time, but - primarily through a class - I got a taste of what the world was like before relational databases. It's an understatement to say: YUCK! Gratitude for the power and convenience of Relational Databases and SQL - and relief at having narrowly averted life before it! - made me an instant mega-fan of that technology. And for many years I held various jobs that, directly or indirectly, made use of MySQL and other relational databases - whether as a Database Administrator, Full-Stack Developer, Data Scientist, CTO or various other roles. UPDATE: This article is now part 1 of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j But ther

Anti-Aging Research: Science, not Hype

Last updated May 2023 Q: "How is aging a disease?" A: It's a dynamic system that veers away from its homeostasis (normal equilibrium point): hence a form of slow-progressing illness. Labeling it as 'natural' is a surrender to our traditional state of ignorance and powerlessness, which fortunately is beginning to be changed! Aging is "normal" only from the point of view of the "selfish gene", for whom the body is a disposable carrier. Individuals organisms - for whom self-preservation has a different meaning than for genes - have received scant help from evolution... with rare exceptions such as the T. dohrnii jellyfish (which I discuss here )... but now the time has finally arrived for our rational design to remedy some of the cellular flaws that evolution never bothered to correct! The above is my standard answer to an oft-asked question. The science of aging is by all evidence very misunderstood by the general public. Hype,

What are Graph Databases - and Why Should I Care?? : "Graph Databases for Poets"

This is a very gentle introduction to the subject. The subtitle is inspired by university courses such as "Physics for Poets"! (if you're technically inclined, there's an alternate article for you.) It has been said that "The language of physics (or of God) is math". On a similar note, it could be said that: The language of the biological world - or of any subject or endeavor involving complexity - is networks ('meshes') What is a network? Think of it as the familiar 'friends of friends' diagram from social media. Everywhere one turns in biology, there's a network – at the cellular level, tissue level, organ level, ecosystem level. The weather and other earth systems are networks. Human societal organization is a network. Electrical circuits, the Internet, our own brains... Networks are everywhere! What can we do with networks, to better understand the world around us, or to create something that we need? Broadly s

Using Neo4j with Python : the Open-Source Library "NeoAccess"

So, you want to build a python app or Jupyter notebook to utilize Neo4j, but aren't too keen on coding a lot of string manipulation to programmatic create ad-hoc Cypher queries? You're in the right place: the NeoAccess library can do take care of all that, sparing you from lengthy, error-prone development that requires substantial graph-database and software-development expertise! This article is part 4 of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j "NeoAccess" is the bottom layer of the technology stack provided by the BrainAnnex open-source project . All layers are very modular, and the NeoAccess library may also be used by itself , entirely separately from the rest of the technology stack. (A diagram of the full stack is shown later in this article.) NeoAccess interacts with the Neo4j Python driver , which is provided by the Neo4j company, to access the database from Python; the API to access that driver is very powerful, but complex - and does

Neo4j Sandbox Tutorial : try Neo4j and learn Cypher - free and easy!

So, you have an itch to test-drive Neo4j and its Cypher query language. Maybe you want to learn it, or evaluate it, or introduce colleagues/clients to it. And you wish for: fast, simple and free! Well, good news: the Neo4j company kindly provides a free, short-term hosted solution called "the Neo4j sandbox" . Extremely easy to set up and use! This article is part 2 of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j Register (free) for the Neo4j "Sandbox" Go to sandbox.neo4j.com , and register with a working email and a password. That's it! Note that this same email/password will also let you into the Neo4j Community Forums and Support ; the same login for all: very convenient! Launch your instance - blank or pre-populated After registering, go to sandbox.neo4j.com , and follow the steps in the diagram below (the choices might differ, but the "Blank Sandbox" should always be there): Too good to be true? Is there

Visualization of Graph Databases Using Cytoscape.js

(UPDATED APR. 2024) I have ample evidence from multiple sources that there are strong unmet needs in the area of visualization of graph databases. And whenever there's a vacuum, vendors circle like vultures - with incomplete, non-customizable, and at times ridiculously expensive, closed-box proprietary solutions. Fortunately, coming to the rescue is the awesome open-source cytoscape.js library , an offshoot of the "Cytoscape" project of the Institute for Systems Biology , a project with a long history that goes back to 2002. One can do amazing custom solutions, relatively easily, when one combines this Cytoscape library with: 1) a front-end framework such as Vue.js 2) backend libraries (for example in python) to prepare and serve the data For example, a while back I created a visualizer for networks of chemical reactions, for another open-source project I lead ( life123.science ) This visualizer will look and feel generally familiar to anyone who has eve

Neo4j & Cypher Tutorial : Getting Started with a Graph Database and its Query Language

You have a general idea of what Graph Databases - and Neo4j in particular - are... But how to get started? Read on! This article is part 3 of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j If you're new to graph databases, please check out part 1 for an intro and motivation about them. There, we discussed an example about an extremely simple database involving actors, movies and directors... and saw how easy the Cypher query language makes it to answer questions such as "which directors have worked with Tom Hanks in 2016" - questions that, when done with relational databases and SQL, turn into a monster of a query and an overly-complicated data model involving a whopping 5 tables! In this tutorial, we will actually carry out that query - and get acquainted with Cypher and the Neo4j browser interface in the process. This is the dataset we'll be constructing: Get the database in place If you don't already have a database installed locally

Full-Text Search with the Neo4j Graph Database

(UPDATED May 2024) Now that we have discussed a full technology stack based on Neo4j (or other graph databases), and that we a design and implementation available from the open-source project BrainAnnex.org , what next? What shall we build on top? Well, how about Full-Text Search ? This article is part of a growing, ongoing series on Graph Databases and Neo4j Full-Text Searching/Indexing The Brain Annex open-source project includes an implementation of a design that uses the convenient services of its Schema Layer , to provide indexing of word-based documents using Neo4j. The python class FullTextIndexing ( source code ) provides the necessary methods, and it can parse both plain-text and HTML documents (for example, used in "formatted notes"); parsing of PDF files and other formats will be added at a later date. No grammatical analysis ( stemming or lemmatizing ) is done on the text. However, a long list of common word ("stop words") that g

Julian's Polymath Explorations

Search This Blog