Online Courses

Statements of accomplishments from online courses that I took.

We live wonderful times - we have access to the whole knowledge of mankind through the device in our pocket once called phone. We have access to world renowned teachers, experts in the domains they're teaching, best of what money can buy - and they're sharing their knowledge for free. We have no excuse not to learn and to evolve as human beings - be that financially or spiritually. 

Below is the trace of my journey to online learning - short reviews for the courses that I take.

Competitive Strategy. LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT

MÜNCHEN (LMU)

This is also an easy course - the videos are 5-15 minutes in length, totaling at most 1.5 hours for a whole week of lectures.  Although easy, I got to learn quite a few, very interesting things like how to solve game theory problems and about commitment strategies: these are credible commitments by the entrant to stay in the market to stop incumbents from retaliating - very interesting and counter intuitive.

Competitive Strategy - Statement of accomplishment - with distinction

Gamification - University of Pennsylvania. Coursera. 

Statement of Accomplishment for the free online Gamification course from University of Pennsylvania.

This is a rather easy course. Although most of the information presented is intuitive, it is well structured and there are things I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. 

I managed to obtain a 71% score without watching about half of the course, just answering quizzez intuitively. 

The final grade was based on 4 homework quizzes (35% of the grade), 3 peer-assessed written assignments (35% of the grade) and a final exam (30% of the grade). To earn a Statement of Accomplishment, you must receive at least 70% of the maximum possible score.

I took it in the first session from August to October 2012.

Networked Life - University of Pennsylvania. Coursera.

Statement of Accomplishment for the free online Networked Life course from University of Pennsylvania

This is a great, practical and entertaining course. It helps you expand your horizons and understand many of the things that are happening in the world we live in. 

I got a final grade of 99.0%. The final grade was determined by normalizing every quiz to a score of 0 to 100 (regardless of the number of problems), dropping each student's four lowest scores, and then taking the averaging of the remaining quizzes. This average was compared to a threshold of 65% for the awarding of certificates. Certificates of distinction were awarded to students whose average score was 100%.

The course started in 10 September 2012 and lasted 6 weeks.

Software Engineering for Software as a Service. UC Berkeley. Coursera.

Statement of Accomplishment for the free online Software Engineering for Software as a Service course from University of Pennsylvania

This is the first online course that I took and it literally made me fall in love with the university teachers from famous universities and with Coursera.

This course is available also through edX. I also liked this course very much. It offered an introduction to Ruby language and to the Rails framework. Although I knew pretty much Ruby and tried RoR a little bit before, I learned a lot from this course.

I took the first session of this class, from February 20 to March 23 2012.