MIT is spearheading a new online education venture called MITx. The courses are free but eventually you will have to pay to have a certificate of completion. They opened enrollment today for their first class, “6.002: Circuits and Electronics.” The course seems pretty intense, the description reading:
The course introduces engineering in the context of the lumped circuit abstraction. Topics covered include: resistive elements and networks; independent and dependent sources; switches and MOS transistors; digital abstraction; amplifiers; energy storage elements; dynamics of first- and second-order networks; design in the time and frequency domains; and analog and digital circuits and applications. Design and lab exercises are also significant components of the course. You should expect to spend approximately 10 hours per week on the course.
I think I’m going to sign up because I’m intrigued by the idea of open education. Also, I think it might give me a leg up in some of my future EE courses. I’m hoping that having a semi-solid background in the material means that I won’t have to spend 10 hours/week but we’ll see. I don’t know if there are any ramifications for dropping a free, online, prototype course.
Anyone else giving this a try?
I read about the course and thought, “hey, the bar will be over; i’ll do that.” Then I came to my senses and realized it’s been 20 years since I took physics and higher maths. I’ll be curious to hear what you think about it.
If it helps, I took physics and math 25 years ago, and it did not harm a bit. I almost completed the course (in parallel with 2 other not so easy courses by Coursera and Udacity). I have a dilemma now – they drop 2 worst labs and homeworks from your grade, I did 10 out of 12 at 100% level. I can relax and skip the rest of material, but it’s interesting! But the fact it will not affect my imaginary grade (I will not benefit from this certificate even if it is official, I am programmer at my day job) somehow spoils the fun a bit.