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.

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

[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

[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.

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: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.

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.