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Another Player In the World of Free, Open Online CS Courseware
dncsky1530 writes "UNSW professor Richard Buckland, lecturer of the famous Computing 1 course on YouTube, is now running a large scale open online Computer Science course for the world. UNSW Computing 1 — PuzzleQuest and the Art of Programming starts off with microprocessors and works it way through C with interactive activities while taking students on an adventure of hacking, cracking and problem solving. It's based around a three month long PuzzleQuest with grand and suspiciously unspecified prizes as well as fame and glory for the intrepid. The next class starts December 3rd 2012."
Same!
This is the most entertaining lecturer I ever had in my 7 years of higher educating. He does not teach programming, but rather computer science, and how to be a better thinker.
He gave up an earlier life of making fortunes as an actuary to become a truly brilliant educator. His passions used to lie in teaching struggling students and the brightest (the run-of-the-mill are well-catered for by established systems), but I guess this is a new step in experimenting with scalability after his YouTube courses.
Good on ya, Bucko.
I haven't watched the lecture yet but if you think pointers and hash tables aren't worthy of 30 minutes each then I doubt you fully understand hash tables and pointers.
Understanding how these and other key memory mechanisms work is the secret to fast and efficient code. Your compiler simply won't fix this for you.
I would highly recommend R. Buckland videos for learning. I monitored his UNSW sponsored Semester 1 Computer science course "1917", from 2008. He has a Semester 2 course on youtube as well. There may be others, The first semester course has 50-some videos, each roughly an hour long. He explains even difficult things very clearly.
TFA mentions this is a first MOOC online course for Australia. I find that hard to believe, does anyone know of others?
This is rather suspicious - four people post here, claiming to have taken the teacher's classes, in person. All four post anonymously. Hmmmmm. Food for thought . . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I had a biology teacher who often got lost, talking about stuff that had nothing to do with biology. The thing is, whatever he was flapping his gums about was INTERESTING. No person in the class was ever bored.
Funny thing about all that is, we all hung on his every word. He might waste ten of the forty minutes in class on nonsense, but he had our attention for the other 30 minutes as well. The motorheads and jocks passed the course, with little problem. There aren't a lot of teachers who can make a claim like that.
The funny looking guy from New South Wales seems to understand that.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Maybe they don't normally post here, and couldn't be bothered creating accounts...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
My dad was a Chemistry teacher who was often accused of wasting time with silly stories. What he was actually doing was putting into practice the theories of David Ausubel, who proposed something called an "advance organiser" -- the teacher evokes a known and familiar concept analogous to the new concept to be taught, thus priming the brain to understand it implicitly in terms of the analogue and to approach tasks using the same strategies as it would employ on the analogue.
It's not the simple idea of amusing with stories as an adjunct to teaching, it's an integral part of teaching. If this guy does that, cool.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Okay, I'm not Anonymous, and I haven't taken any Richard Buckland courses.
I have been involved with the MOOC movement since last year (Dr. Thrun's AI class), taken several online courses, and study human learning for my day job. I've evaluated and compared the teaching styles of MOOCs for my own purposes.
From what I've seen of his work online (YouTube videos), Richard Buckland is the best.
In my opinion his style of presentation maximizes the student interest. Regardless of the content, Richard Buckland will make learning enjoyable; he will cultivate the student's interest and perceived value.
Coursera and edX believe in the "learning is hard" model - they present artificial barriers and difficulties so that only the most intelligent and dedicated student will complete the course. For an example, watch the first lecture or two of Daphne Koller's "Probabalistic Graphical Models" online course.
Richard Buckland takes the view of "learning is fun", and does everything he can to motivate the students. He's been trying out different techniques over the years, keeping what works and dropping what doesn't. At this point in his career, he's got a pretty good handle on what encourages students to learn.
I predict that "The Art of Programming" will have the highest completion rate of all the online courses.
Of the course offerings and business models I've seen, this is likely to be the best one to date.
really liked it actually, thank you for flaming a good episode.
hash tables are pretty important, and he almost covered everything quite entertainingly. He definitely makes his students listen, very good teacher.
I agree, MIT and CMU do brilliant stuff too, but I am not sure, if watching the best will help you understand them, especially after reading your comment