Odds and Ends and Sophomore Year

Starting with some housekeeping:

First, welcome all you Boston Globe readers out there.  If you’re interested in getting the skinny on this project, you can start by reading my first post which introduced what’s behind this experiment in extreme learning.  And anyone who wants to follow my progress can subscribe to the weekly newsletter by punching their e-mail into the box to your right.

Second, the latest DoF Huffington Post piece is up, summarizing some of the discussions from week before last regarding MOOCs and time.

Finally, as newsletter readers know, I’ve settled on my sophomore year class lineup (which will run from April through June).  When combined with the eight courses that made up freshman year (which ran from January through March), this will add up to the 16 courses that meet the course distribution requirements set for the first half of this project which are outlined here.

This sophomore quarter will include:

Course: Justice
Institution: Harvard University
Provider: edX
Category: Social Sciences
Credits: 1 (Major)

Course: The Ancient Greek Hero
Institution: Harvard University
Provider: edX
Category: Humanities
Credits: 1

Course: Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity
Institution: Stanford University
Provider: Coursera
Category: Science and Mathematics
Credits: 1

Course: Death
Institution: Yale University
Provider: Open Yale/iTunes U
Category: Social Sciences
Credits: 1 (Major)

Course: Art History Survey 1300 to Contemporary
Institution: Independent
Provider: Udemy
Category: Humanities
Credits: 1

Course: Life and Work of Mark Twain
Institution: University of Virginia
Provider: Great Courses
Category: Humanities
Credits: 1

Course: Understanding Cheating in Online Courses
Institution: Concordia University
Provider: Canvas Network
Category: Social Sciences
Credits: 1

Course: Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time
Institution: California Institute of Technology
Provider: Great Courses
Category: Science and Mathematics
Credits: 1

As I mentioned previously, the timing of when some of these courses begin and end means that a few of the courses listed above actually began last month, and some of my freshman courses are spilling into April.  But as it looks now, the first half of the Degree of Freedom curriculum should wrap up as scheduled by the end of June.

Homework beckons, so ciao for now.