Syllabus
The course schedule (including homework assignment and instructor/TA participation in forum) is synchronized with Princeton University's course offering on Mon and Wed. There're 21 lectures. Lecture 0 is an introduction to the course content and logistics. Lecture 1-20 each discusses one of the 20 Questions about your networked life.
Week 1
- Sept. 17: Q0: Introduction
- Sept. 19: Q1: What makes CDMA work for my smartphone?
Week 2
- Sept. 24: Q2: How does Google sell ad spaces?
- Sept. 26: Q3: How does Google rank webpages?
Week 3
- Oct. 1: Q4: How does Netflix recommend movies?
- Oct. 3: Q5: When can I trust an average rating on Amazon?
Week 4
- Oct. 8: Q6: Why does Wikipedia even work?
- Oct. 10: Q7: How do I viralize a YouTube video?
Week 5
- Oct. 15: Q8: How do I influence people on Facebook and Twitter?
- Oct. 17: Q9: Can I really reach anyone in six steps?
Week 6
- Oct. 22: Q10: Does the Internet have an Achilles' heel?
- Oct. 24: Q11: Why do AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge me $10 a GB?
Week 7
Oct. 29, Oct. 31: Fall semester break at Princeton
Week 8
- Nov. 5: Q12: How can I pay less for each GB?
- Nov. 7: Q13: How does traffic get through the Internet?
Week 9
- Nov. 12: Q14: Why doesn't the Internet collapse under congestion?
- Nov. 14: Q15: How can Skype and BitTorrent be free?
Week 10
- Nov. 19: Q16: What's inside the cloud?
- Nov. 21: Thanksgiving break at Princeton
Week 11
- Nov. 26: Q17: IPTV and Netflix: How can the Internet support video?
- Nov. 28: Q18: Why is WiFi faster at home than at a hotspot?
Week 12
- Dec. 3: Q19: Why am I getting only a few % of advertised 4G speed?
- Dec. 5: Q20: Is it fair that my neighbor's iPad downloads faster?
Created Mon 25 Jun 2012 10:48:56 AM PDT
Last Modified Sun 16 Sep 2012 6:05:24 PM PDT
Announcements
Course launch
Hi Everyone in Networks FMB: Welcome to the launch of our course! After a week of pre-launch communication (they're all copied below for reference), we're finally starting the course on Sept. 17, 2012.
Check out the course schedule. (we upload video one week ahead of the corresponding lectures at Princeton University)
Check out the lecture videos (with multiple choice quiz question at the end of each video module).
And on Wed we'll put Homework 1 there. (we provide solutions for you to check yourself one week later)
Start discussion threads on the Forum. (and remember to tag each thread at least with a number indicating the video module you're referring to, using "Video 1a", "Video 18d" etc.)
But the first thing we need you to do is to fill out the demographic survey. There's a tab for that right below the Homework and Grand Challenge Homework. The survey is in multiple choice format, and we only ask for coarse-granular information. The sole use of the survey is to understand the composition of almost 40000 of you, and to help us tailor our teaching style more effectively.
Enjoy.
Sun 16 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Flip classroom
You might be wondering: So what's Princeton University's own course looking like now? The lectures are in video, so does it still make sense to repeat the same lecture in the classroom? While that'll save me a lot of time to focus on my research lab, it probably isn't the right way to go forward.
That's why I'm flipping the classroom. If you haven't seen Khan Academy and the TED talk by Khan, you should check those out. Inspiring. Khan was mostly talking about elementary school to high school, but the same principle applies to college even better: Students watch the lectures before coming to the classroom, and then in the classroom they and the their teacher ask each other questions.
Flipping a classroom does not diminish classroom time, it enhances it. One-way open-loop lecturing into a hall filled with facebook-checking students: how is that a good use of classroom time? Let's leave one-way lecturing to YouTube, and save classroom time for interactions.
So, in ELE/COS 381 (the code for this course at Princeton University), we ask all Princeton students to watch lecture videos before coming to each class session. Then in class we
1. Debate and discuss
2. Demo and experiment
3. Guest lecture
We'll record some of the demos and guest lectures (by 20 outstanding guest lecturers from industry, academia, government), subject to their consent, and share with you too.
Now this means a whole lot of additional teaching load to a professor (and I have to keep persuading myself that I'm not spending excessive amount of time on teaching innovations), but it's going to make engineering classroom much more meaningful to the students.
You know these emails are long. So let's keep going.
We asked "what SHOULD a classroom be like?" Now how about the question "what IS open online education?" Some factors are obvious:
1. Course material access (lecture video, slides, quizzes..., by the way, the videos will be captioned on coursera)
2. Social learning environment (this is the only way it can scale up, each new student is also a new potential mini-TA)
3. Assessment (quizzes, homeworks, exams...)
Now, "learning" and "certification" are two distinct concepts. At this point, Princeton is trying out open online education's "learning" part, but not the "certification" part. I'm using GCH and Kudos to provide incentives, but they are not certificates. Please still do the homeworks and check against the standard solutions that we'll provide. We trust you to self-report your scores (more on this on Wed) so that we can better understand how to personalize education and adjust our teaching style. There's no reason not to tell us the true scores, since there's no pass/fail/certificate at stake anyway.
(This whole certification thing is actually a big debate point in this movement: the consistency, authenticity, privacy, and profit-seeking issues associated with certification. And you may have heard that some of these platforms are partnering with Pearson to provide real certification exams, but you got to pay to take those exams.)
4. Interaction with teaching staff (e.g., the TAs and myself are pouring a lot of time every day and night into this course, although we may not be able to reply to every email/tweet/FB upate/forum threads). Maybe virtual, maybe in-person meetup (check out www.facebook.com/mung.chiang.5 under Events or Groups, and you should be able to sign up directly).
So when we "start" tomorrow, it's actually interesting to reflect on what "start" means for an online education experience. Nor is it always clear what the "end" of a course means. The videos, homework, social learning environment will all be there, more like on-demand movies than channelized TV.
In terms of platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are already open for this course. Starting tomorrow (clock is set by US east coast time), coursera video/forum and network20q wiki/blog will also be open.
Of course having a schedule and some deadlines help move things along. And for this semester, we synchronize the schedule with the Princeton University offering of the course. For example, teaching staff will focus on Lecture 0 and 1 this week on the coursera forum.
That's it for this email. And for all the pre-launch announcements.
We have been shooting you one email every day this past week, leading up to the Sept. 17 "launch". That's tomorrow.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Sat 15 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
Kudos List
We're overwhelmed by the encouragement and thoughts many of you left on our facebook wall: www.facebook.com/mung.chiang.5
We've also created about 10 local study groups. They're open groups on FB, so you can just join. These include Washington DC, Boston, Bay Area, Seattle, Dallas, Cologne Germany, Seoul Korea, Toronto Canada, Vancouver Canada and Mumbai India.
I'll be traveling (for conferences and meetings) to many of these places in the next few weeks. In each case, we've created a "Meetup with Mung" event, usually 9pm at a hotel lobby, for me to hear your questions, ideas, etc about the course, and later in the semester to look at your GCH solutions. Here's an almost-Groupon-style protocol: if there're 5 or more local members signed up for an event (by 5pm the day before the event), we'll host that event. Otherwise, we won't (and wait for the next opportunity).
So please check out these study groups and the events mentioned today.
(Of course feel free to organize study groups without meeting me, which by the way will make your own meetup a lot more pleasant.)
You might feel like being overwhelmed at times too. Just remember:
1. I didn't know how to answer half of these 20 questions about our networks two years ago (and I still don't quite know in several cases). What matters most is not how much you cover in a course, but how much you uncover.
2. You may have a full time job, part time jobs, kids to take care, "normal" courses to take at your college or high school... Don't worry if you have to "slack" a little. The beauty of YouTube is that you can watch it later. And the questions you have may be already answered by follow classmates on coursera or network20q when you log in over the weekend.
3. Your backgrounds vary a lot. Really a lot. We can't target each individual perfectly. But look at it this way: there's no pressure of passing or failing this course, it's all about learning something. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe just watch first two modules of each lecture, maybe go all the way to finish a GCH and get a new job. These are all good. There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to how you want to learn in this course.
Alright, so what's the subject of this announcement?
While there's no signed certification (which by the way brings out interesting issue of how to authenticate student activities if certification is issued, unless you pay for proctored exams like through ETS or Pearson), we will have a virtual pat on the back, what we call:
Kudos List
Kudos stands for 'glory' or 'recognition' here. It's a like a badge. When we see someone doing really well in forum/wiki/blog or participates a lot in some experiments we'll run later in the course, we'll announce that name (and city of residence) with a big round of virtual applause on
Twitter (we have 2000 followers now, still growing fast)
Facebook (we have 2500 friends/subscribers now, also growing fast)
Email
network20q website's permanent Kudos List
You can't turn this into bread or gold, but it'll visualize a sense of accomplishment.
That's it for this email.
We'll be shooting you one email every day this whole week, leading up to the Sept. 17 launch. Each day we'll talk about a feature of the course. Today's about course Kudos List. You'll see another feature in tomorrow's announcement.
Talk to you then.
Mung Chiang (chiang.coursera@gmail.com)
and Network FMB Teaching Staff at Princeton
(Follow us on Twitter @network20q too!)
Fri 14 Sep 2012 9:01:00 PM PDT
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario