Kirk Lowery forwarded this link which has all the current and one supposes future Stanford courses that you can take for free online.
Ones that are of particular interest to the practice of topic maps I will continue to call out separately.
November 25, 2011
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This one seems awfully relevant to Topic Maps! I just signed up:
http://www.modelthinker-class.org/
Comment by marijane — November 30, 2011 @ 6:38 pm
@marijane – Thanks! Will put in a post so it is front and center! Looks like competition is heating up to offer high quality courses over the WWW.
Have you seen one of the other Stanford courses yet? I ask b/c I like the short, 2 – 4 minute segment style. You?
Comment by Patrick Durusau — November 30, 2011 @ 8:30 pm
A late reply to your comment —
This will be the first of the online Stanford courses I’ve tried. I do know someone who took the AI class in the fall who found the video-based presentation format frustrating and would have strongly preferred more text-based presentation.
Comment by marijane — January 4, 2012 @ 5:52 pm
marijane: Interesting. I suppose it is a question of learning styles. Good feedback though.
If I were to attempt something like that I would have the same content in the video modules as well as text content.
I suspect most courses pick one approach due to the resources required to fully develop course materials in just one approach.
But that perpetuates the lone scholar rather than say a team of scholars approach. Could have someone who does graphics very well. Another person performs well for audiences. Yet another has a way with computer programs.
Although research in the “hard” sciences is a team effort, it is less so in the “difficult” sciences. And in both I suspect that current publishing/teaching models don’t favor team approaches.
(Having two people teach a class is a “team” approach but only just.)
Do you think library science would be a place that might be susceptible to a different notion of “team” for teaching or publishing? I know that there are several nice Wikipedia books.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — January 5, 2012 @ 11:10 am
In fact, my friend’s feedback to @aiclass on Twitter included a link to the Wikipedia article on learning styles. She also had a tweet anticipating captioning being finished, and mentioned that she relied heavily on them, even as a native English speaker. I can only imagine what a video-centric approach is like for someone who does not speak English as their first language. From what I can tell, she found it most frustrating in the context of the homework assignments.
I am trying to remember what the team-taught classes I had in library school were like. The first one was the introduction to the program, and the professors teaching it had a decades-long relationship and it was very good. The other one I can think of, it was a professor and an alum collaborating for the first time and they didn’t seem like much of a team at all. I think they even resented each other by the end of the semester.
Comment by marijane — January 5, 2012 @ 7:50 pm
Although it would be extra work, I think at least transcripts of lectures (they have software that does ok) are a real must. Even if English is your first language, some content is simply harder to process and transcripts would be helpful.
Good point about team teaching. I don’t know that it would work but thinking along the lines of one person who lectures well, one person who writes really good explanations, one person who does graphics and illustrations, one person who does helpful comments on papers, one person who does extra tutoring, etc.
Not a model that will be popular in budget tight times but one that I suspect would better use the talents of a diverse group of people and provide a first quality experience for students.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — January 6, 2012 @ 11:48 am