How can I make the best use of edX and Coursera?

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Barbara Oakley


Here are some tips for getting the very best out of MOOCs such as those on Coursera and edX. (These tips are taken from my upcoming book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, which is an upcoming lead title from Penguin-Random House).

■ Find the MOOCs and other online courses that best fit your needs—www.Class-Central.com is very useful here.

■ Before enrolling in any MOOC, carefully investigate the course outline, prerequisites, syllabus, and suggested weekly workload.

■ Schedule time each week. To play it safe, it’s a good idea to arrange to have twice the recommended time available for your learning.

■ Some people like to listen to videos at anywhere between 1.2 to 2.0 times normal speed. More advanced MOOCers sometimes employ “fast- MOOCing.” In this approach, you skim through the syllabus and slides before watching videos. Then you watch the videos at up to 2x speed.

■ See how things go during the first week. If you’re not getting a lot out of a MOOC, stop taking it.

■ Don’t enroll in too many courses at the same time. It’s better to study a few subjects deeply than many courses superficially. Most courses are repeated, so you can usually take a course later if it doesn’t fit into your schedule.

■ Use the discussion forum to enhance your learning and to get questions answered— but be aware that this can be time- consuming.

■ Any time you enroll in a brand- new course, you may find it a bit buggy, so if this bothers you, wait until a later offering. But first- time courses can still be fun, so don’t discount them altogether.

(Hat tip, super-MOOCer Ronny de Winter)

Incidentally, making a MOOC is a fantastic experience! Here’s some pictures that show the learning magic behind the creation of Learning How to Learn—the world’s most popular MOOC. The first image shows me standing in front of an ordinary green cloth in my basement (the fireplace is on the left, the sliding door to the back porch on my right). The second image shows how I’ve inserted me into an animated Powerpoint presentation that illustrates key ideas about how the brain works.

There are things you can do in a MOOC to help you learn more quickly that can never be done in a face-to-face class!

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