Coursera and edX offerings overview

Continues a series of reviews of educational courses started Darkus ' om here and here . With his permission, I used the description format.

I'll tell you about the four courses I listened to in the fall of 2012, on Coursera and edX . In fact, I took a little more courses, but something was within the framework of self-examination of the archive of completed courses ( Computer Science 101 , Introduction to Databases ), and something was stopped for personal reasons.
So, consider the following courses:

Coursera

1. Fundamentals of programming
2. An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
3. Information Security and Risk Management in Context

edX

1. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

If you are interested in the courses offered, welcome.

Course Description

The description includes a link to the course page, the names of the lecturers, the university, the start date and number of weeks, approximate scientific areas, the volume of lectures per week, the complexity of the course, the complexity of the language, the availability of programming, the subjective description, the availability of the certificate and the requirements for its receipt, assessment.

Unfortunately, unlike Darkus , I didn’t conduct any intel cards.

Let's get started ...

Fundamentals of programming

• Lecturer: Jennifer Campbell , Paul Gries
• University: University of Toronto
• Launch: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 7
• Research areas: CS: Programming
• The volume of lectures per week: a block of 40-45 minutes
• Difficulty: 1-2
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: An introductory course on programming basics covering topics such as data types and working with them, describing and calling variables, creating and calling functions, using methods, order of program execution (using the debugger built into Python, as well as third-party online resources) , work with cycles and conditions, types of errors and causes. There are weekly homework, checking the understanding of the material, as well as several laboratory works - writing programs based on the ToR (the correctness of the code is checked by a script on the course page).
  In my opinion, a very good introductory course in the field of programming. I would even put it this way: if you are far from programming and do not know what it is and how, the course will help you to feel for yourself, albeit remotely, what it means to be a programmer. A friend shone with happiness when the clock worked (even if the interface of the clock itself was provided by the teachers) :)
  Honestly, for me the course did not open anything new - I took it only with the purpose of making comparisons with other courses, and to help my friend, in which case: )
• Certification procedure: To obtain a certificate, it was necessary to complete 7 weekly homework assignments (each of 5% of the final grade, 3 attempts at the assignment — the questions remained almost unchanged), pass 3 laboratory works (each of 10-15%) and write a final exam (25%). You must score a minimum of 70 points to obtain a certificate.
• Received rating: 98.2%

An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python

• Lecturer: Joe Warren , Scott Ricksner , John Greiner , Stephen Wong
• University: Rice University
• Launch: October 2012
• Number of weeks: 8
• Research areas: CS: Programming
• The volume of lectures per week: 2 blocks of 35-40 minutes
• Difficulty: 3
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: A more advanced course, although explanations of basic terms are still present. What is the plus of this course? The fact that it is proposed to apply the acquired knowledge immediately for writing interactive applications that interact with the user: it all starts with the simplest console game “Rock-paper-scissors” (expanded “lizard” and “Spock”), and ends with “Asteroids” .
  The downside of the course is that it uses the online GUI package, sharpened for the course, therefore, to recreate the game locally, additional libraries will be required.
  The joy of a friend from written programs can not be described :)
• Certification Procedure: No certificate. To get the final grade, it was necessary to complete 14 weekly homework assignments (2 each week for 2-3% of the final grade, 5 attempts per assignment — the questions were almost unchanged) and write 7 games (2 console and 5 graphic). All games were checked by fellow students according to a written checklist.
• Received rating: 87.66% (did not pass the last game, although he wrote more than half)

Information Security and Risk Management in Context

• Lecturer: Barbara Endicot Popowski
• University: University of Washington
• Launch: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 10
• Research Areas: Information Technology, Security
• The volume of lectures per week: block of 1 - 1.5 hours
• Difficulty: 2
• Language: 4
• Programming: no
• Description: A good course that describes quite a few aspects in the field of information security from the point of view of risk management: laws (US), strategy, documentation, control planning, a general description of technologies, a disaster recovery plan, etc. In addition, there are lectures by invited specialists at various levels and the use of NIST 's documentation as educational material.
  In my opinion, the course is suitable for those who want to work in the field of information security, but have not yet decided where exactly, as well as for the heads of information security and higher in the hierarchy, to organize knowledge. The course has almost no technical part.
• Certification Procedure: No certificate. It was optionally possible to write a normative document on information security, but there was no desire, because, as part of the work, I was just doing this.
• Received rating: 100%

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

• Lecturer: Eric Grimson , Chris Terman , John Guttag
• University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Launch: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 14
• Research areas: CS: Programming
• The volume of lectures per week: 2 blocks of lectures (2 topics) for 1.5 - 2 hours
• Difficulty: 4-5
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: Without a doubt, the most powerful introduction course in programming. The first four weeks more than covered the above courses with Coursera, and then something breathtaking began: recursions, algorithms, classes, graphing, simulations, statistics, optimization, graphs, etc. The only negative: it was necessary to allocate about 8-10 hours per week.
• Certification procedure: It was necessary to pass all the classwork interwoven between the lectures (16 works, 5% of the final grade for all works), laboratory works (9 pieces, 15% for all), tests (one work after the first and second third course, 20% each job) and exam (40%). On the test and exam, the spelling of the code was checked by scripts (up to 20 attempts, without output), one attempt was made to theoretical questions. A passing score of 55, though there is a gradation: C (55+), B (65+) and A (80+). What is the difference, I don’t know yet - the certificate will come in a few days.
• Received rating: 94%

I will be happy to answer all your questions)

PS The complexity of the course from MIT can be estimated from the following picture of one of the students :)