It's actually great! I'm enjoying it and learning a lot. It's certainly easier and less work than a Mudd CS class (no programming required) but challenging enough to take me several hours/week to complete the lectures and assignments. I feel like I've got a decent understanding of the major concepts in AI, and knowledge of where to look for more information on solving problems like that when they come up.
Knowing where to look for information to solve a problem is often a key skill. But I don't think I need to tell you that! :-)
I forgot to add that they have been extending the deadline every time the site goes down. This does get a little frustrating though because I have things to do tonight and tomorrow morning, and this afternoon is the one I had set aside to do my homework. This time they claim that they're victims of a DOS attack, it's not just hardware problems as usual.
To be fair, it's (at least until this time) just a load issue. They guessed wrong as to how much compute power they needed to handle 10^5+ online students. They'll presumably do better for future classes. (It's a bit surprising that they didn't get the load scaling right, even so.)
As the class goes, I'm pretty happy with it. There's certainly some simplification due to the format: The problems are all multiple-choice or fill-in-the-number, to mesh with automated grading. It's not nearly as challenging as (most of) the CS classes I remember, but that doesn't keep me from learning quite a bit from the class. If I want to make sure I have the material well-and-truly learned, I should really do some extra work beyond what's assigned. (For example, I should probably implement all of the algorithms they discuss.)
Even with the various quirks, it compares well to the traditional classroom experience.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 10:14 pm (UTC)Knowing where to look for information to solve a problem is often a key skill. But I don't think I need to tell you that! :-)
--Beth
no subject
Date: 2011-12-01 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 10:30 pm (UTC)--Beth
no subject
Date: 2011-12-01 01:07 am (UTC)As the class goes, I'm pretty happy with it. There's certainly some simplification due to the format: The problems are all multiple-choice or fill-in-the-number, to mesh with automated grading. It's not nearly as challenging as (most of) the CS classes I remember, but that doesn't keep me from learning quite a bit from the class. If I want to make sure I have the material well-and-truly learned, I should really do some extra work beyond what's assigned. (For example, I should probably implement all of the algorithms they discuss.)
Even with the various quirks, it compares well to the traditional classroom experience.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-01 12:26 am (UTC)