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This list mostly passes the gut check: the courses near the top are almost universally high quality, and quite reputable. Now, why did I say "mostly" and "almo

This list mostly passes the gut check: the courses near the top are almost universally high quality, and quite reputable. Now, why did I say "mostly" and "almost"? Two reasons: 1. The best technical courses are on Udacity. You may disagree but I think enough people would agree that it ought to be somewhere on the list. 2. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking. Still, all in all, a great resource. I am bookmarking it and am glad you did this.

indigochill 8y ago
Although I can see why a technically-oriented person might say L2L is vacuous, I do disagree. It's not dense or technical, but I got two concrete insights and practices from it (and I don't think I even bothered to finish it): 1. The pomodoro technique really is useful if you're a hopeless procrastinator like me. It's saved my butt numerous times. 2. The explanation of the value of alternating between focused intense thinking and diffused thinking also helped clarify why unfocused thinking is genuinely productive (of course, as long as it's mixed with focused thinking). I've used this to work around mental blocks when I got too stuck in the focused mode.
- projectramo 8y ago
  I agree with you. These are useful concepts, but I've read 5 minute blog posts that convincingly explained these. Spreading this instruction over days/weeks seems to make my point.
  - happycatbasket 8y ago
    That's a problem with a lot of content, right? Specifically practical concepts. Did you ever find yourself thinking the same things about your entry level college classes if you had been lucky enough to attend any? You can read a blog post about building bicycle wheels in five minutes and get most everything you'd gain from going to a weeklong course, but the difference is all in how you'd engage with it. A longer discussion, open area for questions, and building familiarity with the material drive the skill home whereas that 5 minute blog post might as well disappear into the depths of memory the second you navigate elsewhere. I took the course and while I agree that I wanted more depth, it certainly wasn't "vacuous" given the context. And it should be noted, the materials of the course follow some of the concepts taught within - they're doing their best to make sure you learn their basic concepts of how to learn.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      The "I could've learned that in a 5 min blog post" applies to basically anything and is condescending, arrogant, and does not warrant a discussion. Learning How To Learn is an entry level way to get from practically nothing (everyone who can comprehend the course has some fundamental basics; e.g. spaced repetition we learn at elementary school in The Netherlands) to a more productive learning environment. It does that by teaching you techniques via theory, practice, and ultimately a quiz about the material. After you completed the course, you will understand the techniques, have familiarized yourself with each of these, and you can likely apply them. It is also likely you found a preferred technique (or found a confirmation that your previous preference is the best one for you). If you already know these techniques (such as spaced repetition, focused & diffused mode, pomodoro technique) then the course has little value. You could still help people on the forums (explaining something has great value for yourself as well), or learn a thing or two from the forums or Friday mailing. If people don't know how to learn then all the other courses on Coursera and other MOOCs are useless. The popularity of the course and the positive reviews underline its usefulness. You can find naysayers for every course. For example, I'm a naysayer of the Cryptography I course in a way. I recommend it (as far as I finished it; the first 2 chapters I did) because for me it gave me gigantic headaches and migraine. It isn't for me, I'm just not intelligent enough for it combined with the headaches and migraine it didn't work out and I had to call it. YMMV.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > The "I could've learned that in a 5 min blog post" applies to basically anything and is condescending, arrogant, and does not warrant a discussion. You've completely missed the point and even failed to assume that the OP was well-meaning. The whole point of making it clear that the content of an online course can easily be learned by reading a blog post on the subject is to warn potential users that they risk wasting their precious time watching hours of videos consisting mostly of useless filler when spending 5 minutes reading a blog post would get you the same results. Frankly, this is a major and all too frequent problem witg MOOCs. Sadly, some courses are obvious exercises on how to stretch close to no content into hours of video. Personally I would hate to waste hours of my personal time unnecessarily, thus I appreciate these warnings.
yaj54 8y ago
I mostly agree. However, the rankings surface the "most recommended" courses not the "best". "Most recommended" being more objective (easier turn into a number) than "best". Udacity is the 3rd most recommended course provider after Coursera and edX. Those courses will make it into v2. It seems to me that the comments on the learning to learn course generally read like positive recommendations, so I think HN disagrees with you there [0]. But I do want to experiment with different sentiment analyzers. [0]: https://hn.academy/coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ https://hn.academy/coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/
WilliamEdward 8y ago
Two interesting takes... Learning how to learn is a vital part of this list because online courses are notorious for having people burn out and lose interest so it's especially important that these people can stick with a course using actual techniques.
- projectramo 8y ago
  I agree that learning how to learn is a vital skill, and sticking to stuff is an important habit. However, my experience was that this class didn't effectively develop that skill or the habit for me.
- theyinwhy 8y ago
  Why would someone burn out more with online courses (compared to e.g. university). Do you have any sources for this claim? I am very interested in knowing more about this!
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    I don’t know about burnout, but lose interest seems real. I graduated from MIT having dropped perhaps 2 or 3 courses. I’ve “dropped” at least 10x that number on EdX and Udacity. I think it’s mostly a matter of engagement and commitment (no real penalty to dropping a MOOC and it didn’t cost much, if anything) and not that burnout is any worse. IOW, the rate of loss of interest might be no higher, but the initial level of interest might be lower, putting you closer to the threshold of dropping out. Full time university is also the last time I had no other life obligations...
    - toofy 8y ago
      > I’ve “dropped” at least 10x that number on EdX and Udacity. I think many online learning places are making a large mistake by not letting people sample the first 3 or 4 lessons. I too have signed up for and left a rather large number of MOOC style courses simple because signing up for the course is often the only way for me to see if I enjoy the course material, the teacher, and the teaching style—all three of which vary wildly course by course on every site. It seems to me they would be getting much more accurate numbers on completion if they didn’t hide the courses behind so much mystery. It would also have the benefit that we wouldn’t feel like we’ve “dropped” so many courses. And also like you, I didn’t drop many courses at uni, but there was also more information available about the exact course material and there was much more consistency of teaching style. Also many were required for a degree and getting the degree was my primary purpose at the time, MOOCs however are more of a free time fun time thing for me so I’m much more picky.
FabHK 8y ago
> The best technical courses are on Udacity. Is that universally agreed on? The Udacity courses I had looked at (full stack development, AI for self driving cars) were good and insightful, but somewhat half-baked, and not as good as edX or Coursera.
- projectramo 8y ago
  Ah, it was so obvious and strong to me (3 certificates and many courses) that I didn't think this was debated. I would be interested (if you have the energy) to see which Coursera and Edx courses you preferred to the Udacity courses you liked.
  - zawerf 8y ago
    A while back I wanted to learn about SLAM, computer vision, robotics, drones, etc. I did all the following courses which had significant overlap in materials: https://www.edx.org/course/autonomous-navigation-flying-robots-tumx-autonavx-0 https://www.edx.org/course/autonomous-navigation-flying-robo... https://www.coursera.org/specializations/robotics https://www.coursera.org/specializations/robotics (also available at edx as https://www.edx.org/micromasters/pennx-robotics https://www.edx.org/micromasters/pennx-robotics) https://in.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-robotics--cs373 https://in.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-ro... And I would rank them in the order of edx, coursera, and udacity last. It's not totally fair because the best comparison for udacity should be their self driving car nanodegree but it doesn't let you audit for free and I don't care for certificates. From the few udacity courses I did do, I felt their videos are too short and triggers my ADHD to go do something else after watching each minute or two long video. Edx/coursera felt a lot more like university lectures and felt more rigorous in comparison.
    - ericlavigne 8y ago
      Agreed that Udacity's AI for Robotics was a weak course. I highly recommend some of Udacity's recent paid-only courses on robotics: Self-driving car engineer nanodegree (not the one with "intro" in its name) https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nanodegree--nd013 https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nan... Robotics software engineer nanodegree https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-software-engineer--nd209 https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-software-engineer--n... Flying car and autonomous flight engineer nanodegree https://www.udacity.com/course/flying-car-nanodegree--nd787 https://www.udacity.com/course/flying-car-nanodegree--nd787 Just as a sample, this is one of many projects I completed as part of the self-driving car engineer nanodegree. My code controls a car driving on a highway with other cars. https://github.com/ericlavigne/CarND-Path-Planning https://github.com/ericlavigne/CarND-Path-Planning
DarthMader 8y ago
LHTL is important for instilling a growth mindset in students and teaching effective science-backed learning techniques. If you know the 'why' behind an effective study method, you're more likely to continue to stick with it.
arvinsim 8y ago
> 2. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking. I agree. I thought that it would teach me something revolutionary but it didn't. Granted, some of the things they teach are useful. I think the course is just a victim of some people hyping it up too much.
- sharmi 8y ago
  As someone who had taken the course and let some time pass, I thought the same. A stringing together of common sense ideas to learn better. Yet, to provide better context for another comment, I searched online for the course notes and came up with two excellent links. I realized there was more to the course than what I had remembered. Linking them here hoping it will help. https://github.com/Espores/Learning-how-to-learn-Coursera-Notes https://github.com/Espores/Learning-how-to-learn-Coursera-No... https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/5950tm/text_i_just_finished_the_online_coursera_course/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/5950tm/text_i...

indigochill 8y ago

Although I can see why a technically-oriented person might say L2L is vacuous, I do disagree. It's not dense or technical, but I got two concrete insights and practices from it (and I don't think I even bothered to finish it): 1. The pomodoro technique really is useful if you're a hopeless procrastinator like me. It's saved my butt numerous times. 2. The explanation of the value of alternating between focused intense thinking and diffused thinking also helped clarify why unfocused thinking is genuinely productive (of course, as long as it's mixed with focused thinking). I've used this to work around mental blocks when I got too stuck in the focused mode.

projectramo 8y ago
I agree with you. These are useful concepts, but I've read 5 minute blog posts that convincingly explained these. Spreading this instruction over days/weeks seems to make my point.
- happycatbasket 8y ago
  That's a problem with a lot of content, right? Specifically practical concepts. Did you ever find yourself thinking the same things about your entry level college classes if you had been lucky enough to attend any? You can read a blog post about building bicycle wheels in five minutes and get most everything you'd gain from going to a weeklong course, but the difference is all in how you'd engage with it. A longer discussion, open area for questions, and building familiarity with the material drive the skill home whereas that 5 minute blog post might as well disappear into the depths of memory the second you navigate elsewhere. I took the course and while I agree that I wanted more depth, it certainly wasn't "vacuous" given the context. And it should be noted, the materials of the course follow some of the concepts taught within - they're doing their best to make sure you learn their basic concepts of how to learn.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    The "I could've learned that in a 5 min blog post" applies to basically anything and is condescending, arrogant, and does not warrant a discussion. Learning How To Learn is an entry level way to get from practically nothing (everyone who can comprehend the course has some fundamental basics; e.g. spaced repetition we learn at elementary school in The Netherlands) to a more productive learning environment. It does that by teaching you techniques via theory, practice, and ultimately a quiz about the material. After you completed the course, you will understand the techniques, have familiarized yourself with each of these, and you can likely apply them. It is also likely you found a preferred technique (or found a confirmation that your previous preference is the best one for you). If you already know these techniques (such as spaced repetition, focused & diffused mode, pomodoro technique) then the course has little value. You could still help people on the forums (explaining something has great value for yourself as well), or learn a thing or two from the forums or Friday mailing. If people don't know how to learn then all the other courses on Coursera and other MOOCs are useless. The popularity of the course and the positive reviews underline its usefulness. You can find naysayers for every course. For example, I'm a naysayer of the Cryptography I course in a way. I recommend it (as far as I finished it; the first 2 chapters I did) because for me it gave me gigantic headaches and migraine. It isn't for me, I'm just not intelligent enough for it combined with the headaches and migraine it didn't work out and I had to call it. YMMV.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > The "I could've learned that in a 5 min blog post" applies to basically anything and is condescending, arrogant, and does not warrant a discussion. You've completely missed the point and even failed to assume that the OP was well-meaning. The whole point of making it clear that the content of an online course can easily be learned by reading a blog post on the subject is to warn potential users that they risk wasting their precious time watching hours of videos consisting mostly of useless filler when spending 5 minutes reading a blog post would get you the same results. Frankly, this is a major and all too frequent problem witg MOOCs. Sadly, some courses are obvious exercises on how to stretch close to no content into hours of video. Personally I would hate to waste hours of my personal time unnecessarily, thus I appreciate these warnings.

yaj54 8y ago

I mostly agree. However, the rankings surface the "most recommended" courses not the "best". "Most recommended" being more objective (easier turn into a number) than "best". Udacity is the 3rd most recommended course provider after Coursera and edX. Those courses will make it into v2. It seems to me that the comments on the learning to learn course generally read like positive recommendations, so I think HN disagrees with you there [0]. But I do want to experiment with different sentiment analyzers. [0]: https://hn.academy/coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ https://hn.academy/coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/

WilliamEdward 8y ago

Two interesting takes... Learning how to learn is a vital part of this list because online courses are notorious for having people burn out and lose interest so it's especially important that these people can stick with a course using actual techniques.

projectramo 8y ago
I agree that learning how to learn is a vital skill, and sticking to stuff is an important habit. However, my experience was that this class didn't effectively develop that skill or the habit for me.
theyinwhy 8y ago
Why would someone burn out more with online courses (compared to e.g. university). Do you have any sources for this claim? I am very interested in knowing more about this!
- sokoloff 8y ago
  I don’t know about burnout, but lose interest seems real. I graduated from MIT having dropped perhaps 2 or 3 courses. I’ve “dropped” at least 10x that number on EdX and Udacity. I think it’s mostly a matter of engagement and commitment (no real penalty to dropping a MOOC and it didn’t cost much, if anything) and not that burnout is any worse. IOW, the rate of loss of interest might be no higher, but the initial level of interest might be lower, putting you closer to the threshold of dropping out. Full time university is also the last time I had no other life obligations...
  - toofy 8y ago
    > I’ve “dropped” at least 10x that number on EdX and Udacity. I think many online learning places are making a large mistake by not letting people sample the first 3 or 4 lessons. I too have signed up for and left a rather large number of MOOC style courses simple because signing up for the course is often the only way for me to see if I enjoy the course material, the teacher, and the teaching style—all three of which vary wildly course by course on every site. It seems to me they would be getting much more accurate numbers on completion if they didn’t hide the courses behind so much mystery. It would also have the benefit that we wouldn’t feel like we’ve “dropped” so many courses. And also like you, I didn’t drop many courses at uni, but there was also more information available about the exact course material and there was much more consistency of teaching style. Also many were required for a degree and getting the degree was my primary purpose at the time, MOOCs however are more of a free time fun time thing for me so I’m much more picky.

FabHK 8y ago

> The best technical courses are on Udacity. Is that universally agreed on? The Udacity courses I had looked at (full stack development, AI for self driving cars) were good and insightful, but somewhat half-baked, and not as good as edX or Coursera.

projectramo 8y ago
Ah, it was so obvious and strong to me (3 certificates and many courses) that I didn't think this was debated. I would be interested (if you have the energy) to see which Coursera and Edx courses you preferred to the Udacity courses you liked.
- zawerf 8y ago
  A while back I wanted to learn about SLAM, computer vision, robotics, drones, etc. I did all the following courses which had significant overlap in materials: https://www.edx.org/course/autonomous-navigation-flying-robots-tumx-autonavx-0 https://www.edx.org/course/autonomous-navigation-flying-robo... https://www.coursera.org/specializations/robotics https://www.coursera.org/specializations/robotics (also available at edx as https://www.edx.org/micromasters/pennx-robotics https://www.edx.org/micromasters/pennx-robotics) https://in.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-robotics--cs373 https://in.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-ro... And I would rank them in the order of edx, coursera, and udacity last. It's not totally fair because the best comparison for udacity should be their self driving car nanodegree but it doesn't let you audit for free and I don't care for certificates. From the few udacity courses I did do, I felt their videos are too short and triggers my ADHD to go do something else after watching each minute or two long video. Edx/coursera felt a lot more like university lectures and felt more rigorous in comparison.
  - ericlavigne 8y ago
    Agreed that Udacity's AI for Robotics was a weak course. I highly recommend some of Udacity's recent paid-only courses on robotics: Self-driving car engineer nanodegree (not the one with "intro" in its name) https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nanodegree--nd013 https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nan... Robotics software engineer nanodegree https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-software-engineer--nd209 https://www.udacity.com/course/robotics-software-engineer--n... Flying car and autonomous flight engineer nanodegree https://www.udacity.com/course/flying-car-nanodegree--nd787 https://www.udacity.com/course/flying-car-nanodegree--nd787 Just as a sample, this is one of many projects I completed as part of the self-driving car engineer nanodegree. My code controls a car driving on a highway with other cars. https://github.com/ericlavigne/CarND-Path-Planning https://github.com/ericlavigne/CarND-Path-Planning

DarthMader 8y ago

LHTL is important for instilling a growth mindset in students and teaching effective science-backed learning techniques. If you know the 'why' behind an effective study method, you're more likely to continue to stick with it.

arvinsim 8y ago

> 2. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking. I agree. I thought that it would teach me something revolutionary but it didn't. Granted, some of the things they teach are useful. I think the course is just a victim of some people hyping it up too much.

sharmi 8y ago
As someone who had taken the course and let some time pass, I thought the same. A stringing together of common sense ideas to learn better. Yet, to provide better context for another comment, I searched online for the course notes and came up with two excellent links. I realized there was more to the course than what I had remembered. Linking them here hoping it will help. https://github.com/Espores/Learning-how-to-learn-Coursera-Notes https://github.com/Espores/Learning-how-to-learn-Coursera-No... https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/5950tm/text_i_just_finished_the_online_coursera_course/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/5950tm/text_i...