edX

This software as a service provides an education online that you otherwise may not have an opportunity to take and I have been seriously considering a change in career recently so the timing was good to have discovered it. There are free courses and others which are not and most do not have University credit available but some do. You can obtain a certificate once courses are completed with a fifty dollar donation to help verify your identity which is fair. I like the amount of courses geared towards computer programming which is the area I am most interested in. There are other MOOC available as well but this one seems to have the most courses in this area. There are video lectures, machine, self, and peer assessments as well as discussion forums which are moderated.

I wonder how much time there would be with a professor considering the freemium pricing model they use for the most part. This is an aspect which simply couldn't be the same as actually attending classes in person. I understand that when peer assessments happen there is no way to correspond with the peers directly who have assessed your assignment and I think this would be helpful.

I sincerely value the open source, non-profit nature of this MOOC. It's truly amazing to have access to such valuable education most of which is free. I've seen more diversity of courses in others available online. But that's not a criticism as I think it's great to have this much choice to further your education between them. Furthermore my interest in learning Java is available for free which is terrific. I wish there were University credits for the courses I am interested in. That would motivate me more to maintain a momentum so to speak towards taking my new knowledge continuously to the next level. Overall, you can't really go wrong in any way by educating yourself further in life and I'm grateful to have this opportunity.