Since 2012, I have studied the first online course "Richer Leadership, Richer Life", and later the Harvard Happiness Course and MIT Entrepreneurship Course. Each course has benefited me a lot. , and even changed the trajectory of my life. I am very glad that I live in an era where everything is possible as long as you work hard. In this era, education is no longer the scarce resource it was in our parents’ generation. As long as you have a computer and the Internet, you can learn courses from the world’s top universities. Without There is nothing happier than this.
Today I want to share with you a MOOC platform that I have been using: edX. There are two reasons why I like edX. One is the professionalism of the courses, and the other is that most courses are free. Let’s talk about it in detail below.
edX is an online MOOC platform jointly established by Harvard University and MIT in 2012. It has more than 90 partners around the world, including the University of Berkeley, the University of Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, Tsinghua University, University of Michigan and other well-known universities. Funded and managed by the university, edX is the only non-profit MOOC platform that makes learning resources available to the public.
The mission of edX is: to provide more access to quality education for everyone, everywhere in the world; to enhance education and learning in schools and online; to advance education and learning through research.
How to use edX?
1. Register an account
First, you need to register an account with your email on the edX website, which will take about 1 minute.
2. Select courses
After registering an account, you can start selecting courses. When I first learned about edX, looking at the dazzling courses, I was like a mouse falling into a rice vat, and I felt so happy.
EdX’s courses include 30 categories such as education, design, finance, communication, computer science, business management, and music. You can directly find the course category you want, or you can search for keywords, such as positive psychology.
3. Register for the course
After selecting the course you want to take, you need to register for the course. The process is also quite simple and takes about 2 minutes.
Take a course I took as an example:
Just click the green "Enroll Now". After clicking, a webpage will pop up asking you if you want a certification certificate. This certificate costs about 300 yuan. On the one hand, it can urge you to complete the course (it is a bit unreasonable to spend money not to take classes). On the other hand, it also supports edX. Because edX is a non-profit organization, it operates on donations and grants.
If you do not want a certificate, you can also choose "Audit this course" below to listen to the class for free.
4. Start learning
After registering, formal learning begins. Go to the course page and you will see links to each lesson.
Click the link and you will see the course video page.
On the right are English subtitles, which anyone with a certain basic knowledge of English can understand.
Each class is not long, no more than 30 minutes, and students whose attention span does not exceed half an hour are in luck.
In addition to the courses, there are small assignments or tests at the end of each class, and there will be exams in the midterm and final. After completing the assignments, tests, and passing the exam, the course is considered completed.
Friends who are inconvenient to use computers can search for "edx" in the mobile app store and listen to the class on their mobile phones.
Why is edX more fun?
edX has four projects that make it uniquely valuable compared to other MOOC platforms. Let’s talk about it in detail below.
1. MicroMaster program (MicroMaster)
The MicroMaster program is a series of master's level courses offered by well-known universities around the world. If you pass all courses and the final program within the specified time, If you take the exam, you can get the corresponding micro master certification.
The official promotion is that the MicroMasters course design is highly relevant to workplace needs and has been recognized by many large companies, such as Wal-Mart, IBM, General Electric, Adobe, etc. From a more practical perspective, I think the two most practical points of this project are: First, you can get certification from a dream school (such as MIT, University of Michigan, Columbia University) without leaving home. These certificates will look great on your resume. It’s very nice; secondly, the micro-master’s program counts credits. If you go to study for a full-time master’s degree at this school in the future, the credits here can be used as credits for the master’s degree. For example, there is a micro-master's program called "Design Thinking". After completing this program, you can get 9 credits. The total master's program in this major is 33 credits, so you only need to take 27 more credits to get a master's degree.
The time and price of each micro master's program vary. Take the "Design Thinking" program as an example. There are 5 courses per semester, each course lasts 6 weeks, and requires 8-12 hours per week. Hour. The price of this item is $900. I roughly looked at a few courses and didn't see any that cost more than $1,000.
I personally think that the Micro Master's program is very suitable for friends who want to continue their studies but time constraints do not allow it. In addition, friends who want to make a career transition may use this method of learning as a stepping stone to transition.
2. Professional Certificate Program
The Professional Certificate Program is a more career-specific course program designed by business leaders and top universities. (The course instructors include business managers and university professors). According to my understanding, the courses in this project are more practical and have better practicality. Similarly, after completing the course, you will receive certification from the course provider. It is said that many large companies recognize this certificate (after all, many companies participated in the design of the course). Courses include business writing, positive psychology in the workplace, data analysis and visualization using Excel, soft skills in the workplace, capital market operations, etc.
The course time of this project is generally shorter than that of the MicroMasters project. Taking "Positive Psychology in the Workplace (The Science of Happiness at Work)" as an example, the entire project has one to three classes. , each class lasts 4 weeks, 2-3 hours per week. The price of this course is US$402.3. The overall price of the professional certification program is lower than that of the micro master's program, but it also depends on whether the course provider is a big name. For example, Wharton School's "Digital Marketing" has four classes per session. The price for one session is $585.
3. XSeries Program
edX’s explanation of this project is: to provide a deeper understanding of exciting and in-demand fields. My personal understanding is that this series of courses are high-quality professional courses that are different from free public courses, and you will receive a certificate after the course. There are not many courses in this program at present, and many of them are in areas that I don’t know much about, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, genomics data analysis, and astrophysics, which I need to look up in a dictionary to find out.
The course time and price of this project are similar to those of professional certification projects. Taking "Business Model Innovation" as an example, there are 5 classes per week, each class lasts 6-10 weeks, 2-4 per week. hours, price is $49 per class.
4. Courses for high school students
There is a modular course on edX that is specially prepared for AP and CLEP exams (AP is an American college preparatory course, and CLEP is an American College Credit Test). Most courses are free, including physics, chemistry, geography, philosophy, critical thinking, and more.
My children are still young and I don’t know much about the content of high school children. This module may be used as supplementary learning materials outside of high school courses.
The website is: https://www.edx.org/high-school
Course recommendations (just search the course name):
? Entrepreneurship :
"Entrepreneurship 101: Who are your customers?" 》MIT
"Entrepreneurship 102: What can you do for your customers?" 》MIT
《Entrepreneurship 103: Show Me The Money》MIT
《Business?Model Innovation》TUDelft (Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands) (Xseries Program US$245)
Positive Psychology:
"The Science of Happiness" Berkeley
"The Science of Happiness at Work" Berkeley (Professional Certificate? Program $447)
"Chasing your Dream: How to? End Procrastination and Get a Job You Love" MEPhIx (National Research Nuclear University, Russia)
"Existential Well-being Counseling:? A Person-centered Experiential" ?Approach》 KU Leuven University (Belgium)
Children’s Education:
《The Science of Parenting》UCSanDiego