Well I have been busy for the last few months with the various MOOCs that I have been taking. In the last three months I have been involved in the following:
Calculus of a Single Variable: Excellent graphics and presentation, the assignments were unrealistic.
Bioelectricity: Disappointing and frustrating.
Irrationality: I had read the books so I thought I would take the course. Very advanced production but somehow I did not get into it. Probably it was because I felt like I was being manipulated by the instructor.
Digital Signal Processing: Interesting course and the presentation was not too bad given that the instructors are European. Once again, the assignments were unrealistic and frustrating.
Control of Mobile Robots: I have dabbled in robotics myself so I found this to be interesting. The math was a little too involved for my level of interest.
Data Analysis: Useful course, heavy reliance on examples with R.
Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering: Once again, fairly heavy depth mathimatically, but useful nonetheless.
Introductory Human Physiology: Very informative. The tests were too nit-picky so I didn't bother with them but I found the lectures quite interesting.
"Pay Attention" ADHD through the Lifespan: Good but stretched out, should probably be a six week course instead of 12.
Web Intelligence and Big Data: I was disappointed in this one. It was too ambitious in its scope and left too many gaps for the student to fill.
Synapses, Neurons and Brains: Quite enjoyable and very informative. The unit quizzes were quite fair, I haven't seen the final yet.
Medical Neuroscience: This is a great course. A tremendous amount of information and very well presented with lots of excellent diagrams. The workload level is very high and the quizzes are very difficult. I haven't had an exam yet but I'm not looking forward to it. Unfortunately the tests seem to be more of the type that cause un-learning as opposed to learning. There is also a draconian participation requirement for the course forums. I refuse to post simply for the sake of posting.
Mathematical Biostatistics Bootcamp: A strange survey of topics, probably not in-depth enough coverage of material.
Computational Neuroscience: So far it is has been highly mathematical and it is has been one of those courses were you seem to be expected to know the material before they teach it.
Introduction to Data Science: This was disappointing. The organization of this course left much to be desired. Lots of problems getting software to work to do the assigments, not enough guidance.
Statistical Molecular Thermodynamics: I took this to review some of my Chemistry background. I am not going to do the assignments and tests. So far it is very good with lots of demonstrations.
The above courses are all offered by Coursera, which seems to be my preferred source of MOOCS. The Computer courses offered by Udacity tend to have a more consistent user interface and less issues with the programs needed for the coursework. During this time I was also taking a course offered by the Santa Fe Institute called Introduction to Complexity. There were technical issues with this course and the delivery was uneven but overall it was quite good. I haven't seen the final exam yet, so I can't comment on how fair the assessment is.
On top of these I was attending a course locally on Citizen Journalism that was about 7 hours a week for six weeks. So I have been busy. There are still some courses on-going and always some new ones coming up but it will be a little more reasonable from here on. One good thing is that I decided to buy a new laptop because the old netbook just couldn't cut it anymore. It was starting to give me random hard drive errors. So I got a new Lenovo ThinkPad Twist. It has Windows 8, which is just kind of an unnecessary complication. What is really good is the keyboard, it is well designed for serious typing.
So, yes, I should have been writing more but I think it is fair to say that I was just too busy. I want to try and write more and hopefully contribute to the Community News Commons as well.
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