Exam Review – MIT’s 6.00.1x (Introduction to Cs)
After a few months, here i am again, writing for all of you who are interested in MOOCs and online learning. Today (11/2/15), i am reviewing the famous 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python done by MIT (you can find it here on the Edx platform). The first thing that comes instantly in my mind thinking about that is “man, that was hard”. Yeah, that was a really hard course imo. Before starting this course, i had some basis in Cs and especially in programming (as you can see in this forum about C programming), but i find this course beyond the challenge. However, the course was really well built and i really appreciate all the work they made for making that course. Let’s start with the points.
Course Format
The course is divided in 9 weeks of works, and every week covers a specific topic on the introduction of the Computer Science. The effort founded on the enrolling page is set in 15 h/week, but i think i’ve spent less time on that, period. For every week, the course posts a “problem set”, which must be completed in a week. The course so must be taken week per week.
The course also sets some finger exercises after the lectures on the topic, “forcing” the student to do the exercises to continue the course. Most of the times, i found those exercises enjoyable and fun to do, as well as useful for the students 🙂
The Lectures
As said before, every week we’ve new topics, and every topic comes with a set of lectures.
Usually, for every topic, lectures are from 30 to 60 minutes, divides in many videos. Any video is for 3/4 minutes to 10, making every video not boring and sometimes funny. I advise to watch every video posted during the course! Eric Grimson, the teacher during this course, was like a grandfather for all of us (per gli italiani, mi ha rammentato un po questo figuro ), teaching clearly and making the learning easy and somehow funny. The topics covered were a lot. Literally. From the basics of CompSci (variables, loops, etc), passing from recursion (with examples like the Hanoi Tower, not so easy to understand for me), to more complex structures (tuples, dictionaries). The end of the course was focused on the OOP, a must have for every intro to cs course.
the Problem Sets
Sadly, i’ve started the course one month later after his real start (26 of august, i’ve started it the 21 of september), so i’ve missed some Problem sets. However, i found many of those really challenging (like the 2 lasts PS), really not that easy for me (so with basis) and i think very difficult for everyone which haven’t seen a programming language before. Talking about the topics, i found the most difficult part the recursion and also the algorithms.
Conclusions
I’ll re-take a MIT’s course for sure, i liked that course and i hope to like more the next course (6.00.2x Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science). In range(0,10) (eheh), my rate is something more than 8.
See you soon for the next exam review :)
Edit: I’ve obviously passed the exam, you can see the certificate here or on my LinkedIn page ;)
Course Format
The course is divided in 9 weeks of works, and every week covers a specific topic on the introduction of the Computer Science. The effort founded on the enrolling page is set in 15 h/week, but i think i’ve spent less time on that, period. For every week, the course posts a “problem set”, which must be completed in a week. The course so must be taken week per week.
The course also sets some finger exercises after the lectures on the topic, “forcing” the student to do the exercises to continue the course. Most of the times, i found those exercises enjoyable and fun to do, as well as useful for the students 🙂
The Lectures
As said before, every week we’ve new topics, and every topic comes with a set of lectures.
Usually, for every topic, lectures are from 30 to 60 minutes, divides in many videos. Any video is for 3/4 minutes to 10, making every video not boring and sometimes funny. I advise to watch every video posted during the course! Eric Grimson, the teacher during this course, was like a grandfather for all of us (per gli italiani, mi ha rammentato un po questo figuro ), teaching clearly and making the learning easy and somehow funny. The topics covered were a lot. Literally. From the basics of CompSci (variables, loops, etc), passing from recursion (with examples like the Hanoi Tower, not so easy to understand for me), to more complex structures (tuples, dictionaries). The end of the course was focused on the OOP, a must have for every intro to cs course.
the Problem Sets
Sadly, i’ve started the course one month later after his real start (26 of august, i’ve started it the 21 of september), so i’ve missed some Problem sets. However, i found many of those really challenging (like the 2 lasts PS), really not that easy for me (so with basis) and i think very difficult for everyone which haven’t seen a programming language before. Talking about the topics, i found the most difficult part the recursion and also the algorithms.
Conclusions
I’ll re-take a MIT’s course for sure, i liked that course and i hope to like more the next course (6.00.2x Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science). In range(0,10) (eheh), my rate is something more than 8.
See you soon for the next exam review :)
Edit: I’ve obviously passed the exam, you can see the certificate here or on my LinkedIn page ;)
Comments
Post a Comment