Recently, some friends asked me backstage, asking me to recommend some reliable learning materials, high quality and free of charge…
I was going to use the following emoticon as a response, but then I thought it’s not easy for the student party to get some information. So I took some time to write this article and do some popular science for you. Where can I find free and high-quality information?
To be clear, I did not receive any money from Coursera and Edx. If there is any coincidence, please make up my advertising fee (fog). Let’s get down to business and start with a brief introduction to these two sites.
The popular science time
Coursera, founded by Andrew NG, and edX, founded by MIT and Harvard, are two US-BASED online education companies. Can be as simple as netease cloud classroom overseas edition, the income of the two sites of course quality is very high, many public class is MIT and harvard, and some experts are some famous companies of professional courses, such as IBM and Google many experts in lectures, more recently, of course, also the content of some domestic well-known colleges and universities.
There is not much difference between the two websites, among which Coursera is more well-known in China and develops better, perhaps because Andrew is a Chinese and relatively close to China. EdX also has cooperation with some universities in China, but localization is worse. EdX is a bit more official than Coursera because of its university roots. For example, MIT and Harvard open courses are only available on edX. The courses offered by these two universities are of very high quality, and they are also the flagship courses in edX.
Neither site is entirely free, but neither is it entirely free. They all use a fee-for-certificate model, which means that a course is divided into auditing and formal classes. Auditors can normally listen to lectures and see part of the homework, but they cannot submit homework or take the exam. Paying users can enjoy all the materials in the course, and when they pass the course, they will receive a certificate corresponding to the course. I think the idea is that in the future these certificates can be used as a mark of competence similar to a university diploma, but so far, as far as I know, this has not been fully realized. So for us, the content of the course is the most important, the certificate is optional.
Of the two, I personally recommend Coursera. It also has good localization, good subtitles and good translations, and the courses are great. EdX localization is much worse, many courses do not have Chinese subtitles, but edX is easier to audit, and some resources are exclusive, such as MIT and Harvard courses mentioned just now, so sometimes we cannot let go.
White piao tutorial
Apply for a scholarship
The first way is to apply for scholarships, have to say that this is still very human. After all, not all students can afford to pay tens or hundreds of dollars for a course, and to be honest, that’s a lot of money for students. So Coursera is putting a human face on it by offering a scholarship system that allows students and others who can’t afford a course to apply for free tuition.
Let’s open a course at random and see how it works:
That big button up there says take a class. Don’t click on that, click on the fine print next to it. Coursera in China may show slightly different results, but the location is similar. We click on it and a popup pops up asking us to fill out the application form.
It states that it takes a minimum of 15 business days (intentionally) to process the applications, and then asks us to fill in some current information, such as whether we work, where we go to school, and why the courses will help us. After filling out this information, you can wait to pass and then you can attend the class for free.
Since I am not qualified, I have never applied, and as far as I know, almost all students can pass their applications.
attend
Another option for those who don’t qualify, or who don’t want to wait and pay, is to audit classes.
We click the Enroll For Free button, and select the one below from the popup box that does not require a certificate, that is, a free course:
However, not all courses can be audited so smoothly. Due to the need of making profits on the website, the entrance to audit some new courses is very obscure. It is often difficult to find the entrance for the first operation, and I accidentally clicked on the wrong payment (for example, I paid 75 dollars).
Let’s look at an example, let’s say this is a TensorFlow suite, which is a combination of classes.
After we click the Enroll button, there is no audit button among the options that pop up:
If you sign up for a free trial, the result is payment and a regular monthly deduction. I have to say it’s still a bit of a hole, and THAT’s how I paid my precious wealth.
What we need to do at this time is to pull down the window and find the specific courses included in the set of courses:
We choose a specific course, try it again, and find the entrance to audit will come out. That is to say, the combined courses cannot be audited directly, but must be separated and audited one by one. Plainly, wool cannot be collected all at once, it must flow.
EdX, by contrast, is a non-profit, with a much more visible entrance that can be seen by clicking on a course.
conclusion
I have audited several courses, and the experience is still good. Most of the assignments and materials are the same as normal payment users, which is enough for our self-study. In addition, I hope that you can support more legitimate, conditional or payment class. After all, creation is not easy, creators should get income, if they can not earn money, who will give us these white share lessons? That’s why I don’t share pirated material.
In the end, I would like to recommend some of the following courses to you. First of all, Andrew’s Machine Learning course (pictured above) and Deep Learning Specialization, which he published in recent years. This is a set of deep learning courses, we can use the above method to audit one by one. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python and Introduction to Computer Science, These are two introductory computer courses at MIT and Harvard, perfect for beginners. In addition, such as Python and big data and some other technologies, there are many classic courses in both sites, since I have not heard of them all, so I will not recommend them randomly.
Finally, on a side note, I’ve been approached by several offers for Python courses lately, but I’ve turned them down because I can’t in good conscience introduce courses of dubious quality (free) on Coursera and edX. Sometimes it’s easy to make money. What’s hard is to do the right thing, feel something, and share it with everyone.