I’m barely a couple of weeks into 6.002x and yet I’m already finding new methods of procrastination. Sigh. Some ways are more fruitful than others, however, and I’ve managed to find a number of people who are also blogging their way through the course. Here’s a selection of some of the more interesting posts I’ve found so far.
In an incredibly enthusiastic first post, Anna Chiara announces that MITx is alive, managing 6 “cools”, 3 “greats” and 3 “amazings” in quick succession. Her motivation for taking the course? “… I’m a real fan of e-learning. It’s a really new field, at least at this level and scale, and there are so many initiatives, so many people are exploring the field and testing which methods will lead to the best results.”
Phillip Edwards sets himself four ground rules for taking the course, while also declaring his preference for a constructivist approach to education. “My model of how students learn might not be aligned with what the MITx course staff are bringing to bear in the course–which, absent compelling evidence to the contrary in this case, is probably fine for many, many purposes.”
Callam McMillan in his first post on the course lists many different variants of Ohm’s law citing google as his friend and goes on to discuss the differences between DC and AC power. “… if you haven’t seen these two equations, then leave now … Voltage = Resistance * Current (V = RI) and Power = Voltage * Current (P = VI)”
Tony Bates wonders if MITx will work – and not solely from the perspective of students. “Is this a business model that could be replicated in other universities? Or is it still heavily dependent on philanthropy?”
And for anyone wondering what the MITx 6.002x experience looks like, Brandon Muramatsu has plenty of screenshots to look at while giving his first impressions of the course and has some interesting observations surrounding accessibility. “While I think it’s shortsighted to not fully support upwards of 77% of web users … , why not go all the way? People using MITx can be expected to be crazy motivated to participate, downloading and installing Chrome is probably not going to deter them. (Those that are going to complain about IE support, are going to complain anyway).”
Time to get back to working my way through week 2 I suppose!