IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

COURSERA

Last year I discovered www.Coursera.org. They offer University level courses taught by Professors from around the world on everything from Neuroscience to Computational Photography to Philosophy to Calculus to music and so much more.

I felt I needed a boost, reminder, refresher what-have-you in my sound production skills. So I began taking Introduction to Music Production from Berkley College of Music, which I've now been doing for the past month. I'm four weeks into a six week program. There are obviously skills that I've retained, but when it comes to the technology involved in music production, it's never too late to keep current.

At the same time, I'm 4 weeks into a 10 week class through the University of Virginia called, Know Thyself. It's philosophy! So far I've studied Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Ryle, and Wilson with much more to come. Why? Why not.

In addition, over the next year, I'm signed up for such classes as Music Theory, Guitar, Fundamentals of Audio Engineering, Inspiring Leadership, Intro to Art, Online Games, Modern & Contemporary Poetry, Scandinavian Cinema and more.

All the classes are structured differently. For example, every week in my music production class, I have video lectures (5-10 at no more than ten minutes a piece) with 3-4 quizzes (with 100 tries allowed!) based on the material covered in the lectures. I then have a weekly project that I need to create after picking one of ten possible topics based on the info learned in the weekly video lectures. I then post the project on YouTube for my classmates to review. Once I post my project for review, I also need to review and critique not only my own effort, but five other peer's assignments. The bulk of the grade is on the weekly assignments.

Here's a link to the assignments I've done to date:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FromDavidStuart

There are deadlines for completing the work in the music production class, but in my Philosophy class there aren't. I simply need to read an optional text on the weeks topic, watch a bunch of video lectures and take a quiz. There are no deadlines for the weekly quizzes other than the end of the 10 week class. The catch on this one is you only get one attempt to do the quiz. It's open book and you can save your answers before submitting, but it's definitely not easy.

Some classes are easier than others requiring only a few lectures per week and a 6 question quiz, but the description of the course will let you know if it's over your head. Besides, with 80,000 fellow classmates, I don't think you'll be missed if you decide to un-enroll.

Oh, and one other thing... Did I mention that some of their classes are now accredited so you can use them to get a degree? One more thing... It's FREE!

Check it out. Who knows, maybe we'll be classmates someday.

Cheers,
dave