Ask Slashdot. Best Online Science Course?

First time accepted submitter blubadger writes "Having slept through chemistry at school, I'm looking to fill in the gaps in my science education by following a short online course or two. I've been searching for 'Chemistry 101,' 'Basics of Physics,' 'Biology Primer,' and so on. There's some high-quality stuff on offer – from Academic Earth, MIT and others – but it tends to take the form of videos of traditional university lectures. I was hoping to cut through the chit-chat and blackboards and get straight into the infographics and animations that will help me understand complex ideas. Flash and HTML5 Canvas seem wasted on videos of lectures. If the quality were high enough I would be willing to pay. Have Slashdotters seen anything that fits the bill?"

Comments

Dear Slashdot,

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the comic book version of the Library of Congress, so I can look at pictures and know everything?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[blue trane]

What if you could present the chapter in such a way that I didn't fall asleep when reading it?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[sneakyimp]

The Feynman Lectures on Physics are awesome. Better than any other materials I ever encountered on the subject of Physics. I don't recall how difficult they are -- i.e., whether they require calculus or not.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed/dp/0465023827

If anyone could recommend something comparable for Calculus, I'd love to hear it. I need a Calculus refresher.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Altrag]

I'm only a bit started on the second book, but the first book did require some minimal calculus -- mostly stuff you'd find in an average first year calculus course.

What gave me trouble here and there was the way he wrote calculus stuff right into his prose. Its just not the way I'd ever been taught to deal with calculus (or really, any maths.) Even with a full two years of university-level calculus and no shortage of other mathematics classes, I'd always only seen the equations and problems split off in a very obvious and segmented manner. It was a little eye-opening to see that stuff embedded right into the text and written out in words!

He also tends to skip a few steps (again, probably a reasonable thing to do given the target audience) which can occasionally make following the equations a bit tricky if you don't happen to immediately notice the steps he's skipped.

Of course, if you're willing to fore-go the maths all together and just try to absorb the more general ideas, you'll probably do all right.

And finally, you'll have to keep in mind that these books were published in the 1960s and I don't think have ever really been brought up to date (which would be hard to do without changing the nature of the text, given that they're mostly a transcript of his actual lectures.) So there's a little bit of outdated information in there that we've since shown to be.. if not incorrect, at least not entirely accurate. I'm sure I'll see more of that when I finally hit the third book (quantum mechanics), but even in the first book he makes the occasional reference to things that turned out to be not quite as they appeared back in 1964.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[iiii]

...published in the 1960s and I don't think have ever really been brought up to date...

They have been updated. From wikipedia: "Also released in 2005, was a "Definitive Edition" of the lectures which includes corrections to the original text."

And the Amazon page says: "The revised edition of Feynman's legendary lectures includes extensive corrections and updates collated by Feynman and his colleagues. A new foreword by Kip Thorne, the current Richard Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, discusses the relevance of the new edition to today’s readers."

Khan Academy

[roadkill-maker]

Have you looked at Khan Academy? http://www.khanacademy.org/

Feynman's Lectures on Physics

[demachina]

Feynman's Lectures on Physics is probably as good or better than any online course you will find.

Oh waaa

[i kan reed]

Higher education consists of actual dialog, lots of words, and drawing on blackboards. Why can't I have infotainment? I'm willing to pay to have things dumbed down for me.

I know I'm being obtuse, but seriously, this stuff is too complicated for simple little animations and pictures to make substantially easier.

Re:Oh waaa

[Anonymous Coward]

but seriously, this stuff is too complicated

That kind of defeatist attitude angers me.

It's the job of educators to make complicated material straightforward to understand.

If it can be done with simple infographics and animation, then that's great.

If it can't be done that way YET, then people with more imagination than you will figure out how to do it. All I ask is that you don't stand in their way, or denigrate them as they accomplish what you cannot imagine.

Re:Oh waaa

[LF11]

To a certain extent, you are correct.

However, there are many ways to learn. Classroom learning is just one. Traditionally, humans learn by imitation, experience, and storytelling in small groups. For many modern young people, it appears that YouTube is taking the role of storyteller.

There are a LOT of students who struggle through a lecture, then promptly go on YouTube to find videos recorded by instructors who are actually interested in teaching. This applies to all levels of classes, from introductory classes to my current head-asploder; biochemistry.

You may have suffered through traditional "higher education," but a new generation is learning a different way. Some of them are learning it better. We have made tremendous progress in many fields, why do we not study the process of academic instruction just as intensely as, say, nuclear physics? Because people like you seem to think that just because you suffered through it, everyone else must suffer as well. It's only fair, right?

Sorry. You were being obtuse. :)

Khan Academy is good, a lot of people use those videos!

--cej102937

Re:Oh waaa

[gadlaw]

What the heck does that mean? What are these 'Popular Science Rags' you're talking about? So anything that helps folks explore the wonder and intelligence of science is a 'rag' unless it does what? Unless it's incomprehensible to anyone but you? How is that helping anyone? It's hard enough getting some folks to even accept science and your attitude certainly doesn't help.

Re:Oh waaa

[drinkypoo]

It is simply impossible to get a handle on modern science, even at fairly basic levels, without a good understanding of mathematics

I feel like something is missing from mathematics. Part of that is that I'm not very good at it, but somehow I don't feel like the attempt was made to teach me how math actually worked, just how to plug numbers in and get consistent results.

Re:Oh waaa

[Animats]

Higher education consists of actual dialog, lots of words, and drawing on blackboards.

Misery is looking at video of people writing things on blackboards. At least move up to the format where there's a clear view of the slides and an inset for the talking head.

Re:Oh waaa

[mathfeel]

I agree with your larger point that the traditional lecture style education is not good for everyone.

You may have suffered through traditional "higher education," but a new generation is learning a different way. Some of them are learning it better. We have made tremendous progress in many fields, why do we not study the process of academic instruction just as intensely as, say, nuclear physics?

We do. Some physics department, like the one from which I got my PhD, offers research in physics education as a PhD program. Student do research and gather data in classroom and apply the same statistical analysis techniques to asset the effectiveness of certain teaching techniques. Unfortunately, they usually do not get the same respect in the department as more traditional thesis topics. Usually there are a few (<5) faculties out of the whole department who actually care about physics education that they accept student in these topics. The APS is starting to recognize it as a specialty, but only treats it as a "special topic". We are getting there.

Khan Academy is good, a lot of people use those videos!

--cej102937

When I was TA-ing to pay my way through my degree, I recommend KA to many intro physics students. Then after talking to a lot of them, I find the result to be kind of mixed. Some find it helpful, other not and it somewhat surprised me that it did not correlated with grade. The worst case is that some thinks it's helpful when in fact it did not (and you can tell by asking conceptual questions that is only a twist of the problems covered in the video). Totally anecdotal. However, fellow students who actually engaged in physics educations research tents to agree that a one way dictation, abet using video, do not help student who lacks a good conceptual foundation to begin with. And this guy, who also did a PhD in physics education, also agree. I do think the world is better with those video than without though.

Re:Oh waaa

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like something is missing from mathematics. Part of that is that I'm not very good at it, but somehow I don't feel like the attempt was made to teach me how math actually worked, just how to plug numbers in and get consistent results.

It's not missing from mathematics; it's just missing from the lower levels of mathematics education. The analogy I often use is that a calculus course is like teaching someone how to drive a car; if you want to know how the car works and how to build and repair one yourself, you need to take a course in real analysis (which is essentially calculus done over again with everything actually proved).

Students who are not math majors seldom reach this level (which typically requires some gateway "introduction to higher mathematics" course), so they never have any idea what mathematics is about: they learn how to use it, not to do it. Indeed, most math graduate students don't have much of the big picture either. I'm a math Ph.D. with an unusually broad background (including comp. sci., physics, some engineering), but I still find that some senior faculty members seem to be able to see how the pieces fit together in a way that I still don't. So there are still higher levels; I wonder how far they go.

KhanAcademy

[Yogiz]

I suggest you take a look at the videos at http://www.khanacademy.org/. The guy that makes these has quite a talent for teaching and the sketches help a lot with more difficult subjects. I'm currently about half way through with the macroeconomy playlist and I find the information very easy to obtain in the format it is provided there.

Re:KhanAcademy

[LF11]

^^ this ^^ I can't recommend Khan Academy enough. Many people in all the science classes I have taken (chem, biochem, orgo, anatomy, physiology...) have been hitting up YouTube to learn material, and it has been working very well for them. Khan Academy is a constant favorite!

cej102937

Re:KhanAcademy

[FatAlb3rt]

What Udacity as well - they are quickly ramping up their courses. New one for physics starting June 25.

CrashCourse - lots of infographics and animations

[astropirate]

Crashcourse has lots of nice animations and information. http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

YouTube series: Crashcourse

[Z80xxc!]

It's a work in progress, but there's a new YouTube series called Crash Course which presently covers biology and world history. They're planning to encompass other subjects in the future as well, but it just recently started. The history lessons are taught by author/nerd John Green and the biology is taught by his brother Hank Green. I suggest you check it out; it's got lots of neat graphics, simple explanations, and is easy to follow.

As mentioned in other posts, Khan Academy is also a fantastic online resource. It's not quite as spiffy as Crash Course, but covers far more subjects, and is easy to follow.

Open Learning Initiative

[Anonymous Coward]

You should take a look at Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative ( http://oli.cmu.edu ). They have whole courses, which are typically not video-based, and they include lots of interactive exercises to help you grasp the concepts. (Full Disclosure: I'm currently working on a new chemistry course for OLI, which should be available later this year or early next year.)

Re:not sure this is a good strategy

[Hatta]

What is the difference between "infographics" and graphical information written on a blackboard, anyway?

There is value in "shallow" learning

[NotQuiteReal]

Just because someone wants just the broad strokes doesn't make them a bad person.

Knowing ABOUT something is half the battle to knowing HOW to do something. I don't need to know how to do the math myself to appreciate the concept of what it is doing.

Just one look at the math for something like this makes they eyes of most people glaze over, and they don't even know it exists. Even without being able to solve those equations themselves, a "comic book" version of it, if done well, might make more people appreciate stuff they "use" every day.

Re:There is value in "shallow" learning

[iiii]

Agreed.

There is great value in knowing which things we (i.e. humanity and the scientific community) understand and which we don't. To me this is the primary message and the joy of reading/listening to Feynman. Over and over again he sketches out what we understand in a field and then highlights the questions that remain, and shares his enthusiasm and wonder for those unanswered questions that are waiting out there for a sharp mind grasp. This focus on the unanswered question is what makes his work so inspirational. It makes you want to become a physicist so you can go out and solve some of those mysteries. And that also is what differentiates Feynman's approach from how science is taught in most places. It's taught with a focus on what we know, which unintentionally gives the student the impression that we mostly understand things, which is completely wrong.

On another note, as a computer scientist and architect of large systems, it is important for me to know what is do-able and what is not, which problems we have solutions for, which are intractable nonstarters, and which we have a chance to solve in the right situation with the right brainpower applied. The details of why are less important. For example, I don't need to understand deep crypto to know what we can encrypt the comms between these two components. I know it's a solved problem, what it can and cannot do, and that's all that matters to me. Put it in my toolbox along with sorting, hash tables, full-text indexing, AJAX, machine learning, and hundreds of other techniques, each of which is its own deep field, and I can use this knowledge to design systems with high confidence that they are going to work as planned.

Re:I personally love Khans accademy.

[xclr8r]

He knows what it is. He just didn't check for the specific course. Khan covers a lot more than it use to.
Chem
http://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry
and
Organic Chem
http://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry
Thinking I just got trolled by two ACs.

Dear Submitter

[AliasMarlowe]

Having slept through chemistry at school, ...

Seriously, go for the lecture videos. Take notes, and review them afterwards, just as if there was going to be an exam on the topic. Don't overload yourself; these things take time to absorb and to integrate with your existing knowledge.

Pause and replay videos as much as needed, but you have to concentrate on the material being conveyed. An engaging infographic can give you an overview of some topic (like for plate tectonics or the SN1 reaction mechanism) perhaps to the "informed layman" level. To reach a more knowledgeable level, you'll have to get your own mind wrapped around related groups of essential details (the classes and processes of felsic minerals, for instance). If you fall asleep during a lecture video, then replay it and try to stay awake.

Open University

[Anonymous Coward]

Open University. UK/European. Being going for years now. You pay for it though and earn real UK diploma/degree qualifications.

Re:not sure this is a good strategy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Perhaps someone stuck in traditional Academia.

Ah yes, that stuffy, hidebound world of academia, where smart people have to think really hard for a long time to understand complicated subjects, instead of getting their information in easily digestible "infographics" and becoming instant experts.

Create a learning plan

[Peterus7]

I would check out the Edupunk's guide to DIY Education, and move forward from there. Khan Academy is good for math, because you can actually test your skills, but with science education, you need some way of actually showing the process skills. Until then, though, KA should be a good refresher.

Some courses and other resources

[cowtamer]

FREE STUFF

UC Berkeley Webcasts (I learned quite a bit from these -- try different courses by semester. Listen to the 1st and 2nd lecture to see if it's high value. Some are better than others. I got an excellent MEMS lecture from here once, and a really good one on Byzantine history. Some (like history) are good as audio in your car. Others get better with charts.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

MIT OpenCourseWare (haven't tried, but hear good things)

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Khan academy (of course)
http://www.khanacademy.org/

PAID RESOURCES

Kaplan http://www.kaptest.com/
(Take something like the MCAT review if you can afford it for science/physics. They do a really good job of distilling the basics of science/biology/etc. without any nonsense. Disclaimer: I've also taught for Kaplan)

Also, don't discount old fashioned books:

The "Head First" series of books
(Try the "Dummies" books also if you're not insulted by the title)

Head First Physics

Home Schooling Curricula
Whatever you may feel about the social implications of home schooling, there are some excellent science resources which will catch you up. I will shy away from recommending specific ones for fear of inciting a flame war. I hope someone better versed in these curricula can enlighten us with recommendations.

Textbooks!
Try to get some used textbooks from a used book store, if all you want is the 101 level stuff:

Chemistry (Oxtoby-Nachtrieb) http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Modern-Chemistry-Fifth-Edition/dp/B001F39B2Y
(There are many nicely written Biology books -- see what you like)

And if you really want to enjoy chemistry:

Chemical Demonstrations, Shakhashiri

(Warning: do not try these at home until you know what you're doing)

You may also wish to check out your local Makerspace/Hackerspace. You will probably find very educated geeks who'd be more than willing to teach you stuff...

Freshman Organic Chemistry at Yale is awesome

[TheSync]

Not quite Chem 101, but when you are ready for truly understanding the quantum mechanics of how molecules form from atoms, why molecules are acidic or basic, why they are reactive or not, you totally need to check out Prof. McBride's Yale Freshman Organic Chemistry (CHEM 125).

It is on YouTube, but the iTunesU version is better.

Re:The Great Courses

[fiannaFailMan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Courses

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/courses.aspx?s=821&ps=910

Beware the bombardment of direct mail they will send you when they get your address.

Re:not sure this is a good strategy

[Altrag]

There's a huge difference between learning something and becoming an expert in it. An introductory course to anything isn't going to make you an expert no matter what medium was used to express the information.

People grossly overestimating their own competence in a subject is a different topic all together, but again is pretty irrelevant to the specific medium used to transmit knowledge to them.