{"id":1348,"date":"2013-11-08T12:41:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2013-11-07T21:42:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T03:42:24","slug":"coursera-online-mooc-one-students-experience-with-stats-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1348","title":{"rendered":"Coursera online MOOC: one student’s experience with Stats 101."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been taking Statistics 101<\/a> from Coursera<\/a>. This course is taught by a Princeton professor. I have been interested in stats for a while<\/a>, but have never taken any classes. As a bonus, a work project I’m focused requires a lot of linear regression. (I’m using a library for the linear regression<\/a>, of course, but wanted to understand some of the limits of linear regression before applying it for a business purpose.)<\/p>\n

It was very easy to sign up for the class. I was a bit early, (the lectures are put up weekly starting on a given date), so I just added my email address to the wait list. When the class started, they emailed me and I registered.<\/p>\n

It was free.<\/p>\n

There are some changes coming to the university world. I have some friends who are professors and I’ve been sharing articles like this one<\/a> and this one<\/a> for years.<\/p>\n

So, that was an additional reason to take the course. What would an actual online class be like?<\/p>\n

The class is divided up into 12 weeks, 1 midterm and 1 final. Each week there are between 4 and 6 lecture videos to watch (the longest was approximately 20 minutes, the shortest is approximately 5 minutes), a lab video and a homework assignment. The lab typically examines the lecture concepts and puts them into practice using R, an open source stats tool\/language<\/a>. The homework is an untimed quiz that I have 100 tries to finish. Each quiz has 10 questions, some text input, some multiple choice, and typically is due 2 weeks after the initial lecture on the topic. I can complete the quiz later for reduced credit.<\/p>\n

I’m over halfway through the course.<\/p>\n

Am I learning something? yes. Definitely. I’ve learned basic concepts of statistics. There has been some handwaving on some complicated concepts and single letter concepts are occasionally introduced with little explanation (t, Z, and F values, for example), but this is an intro course, so I am unsurprised. I definitely have become comfortable with basics of R.<\/p>\n

Am I learning what I would be in a normal college classroom? Nope. There’s been no collaboration (because of my time constraints, I don’t participate in the forums, which are the only form of collaboration I have seen). All R scripts are provided in the labs, which means you sometimes just cut and paste. Questions on quizzes are constrained by the online test format. Because I’m jamming it into my schedule, I don’t review the material as much as I should. There’s no opportunity to stop the instructor and ask exactly what he meant.<\/p>\n

But….did I mention it was free? And that I’m not in college and don’t have the time for a normal college class?<\/p>\n

If you are thinking of taking an online course through a MOOC<\/a> like this one, here are some tips.<\/p>\n