Just received a Statement of Accomplishment after the Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part I online source at coursera.org.

In short – it is awesome! I’m not talking about the material they provide. It is great without any concerns. I’m talking about the technology of online education.

Briefly. The course lasts six weeks. Each week we are given video lectures, a hour and a half in total, broken down into 10-20 minutes episodes. The videos are interactive, and sometimes you’ll get a quiz along with watching. For each episode there are two PDFs. The first has live commentaries written by hand. They appear on videos along with lector’s voice. The second is a regular PDF with slides. You can watch videos as many times you want: in the browser or downloading it. English subtitle are available. There is a cool feature in the online video viewer – you can change the speed from 0.5 to 1.5, so it turns to too much “blah-blah”, there is a way to speed it up.

Also you’re given with a list theoretical questions and one programming question each week. You only have a few attempts for submission. The best answers count.

There is no real deadline but submissions after the “official” deadline will be graded with 50% “discount”. So, if you’re up the certificate after the course, it’s worth doing it in time.

At the very end there is a final exam. You’ll have 3 hours to complete.

There are forums available where you can communicate with other students and course owners.

Subjectively, I’d make the course a bit “tougher”, but in general it has perfect balance for a couple of evenings a week.

Conslusion: Strongly recommended. Not this particular course because everybody has different interests, but the technology in general.

Nowaday if someone says that he or she has no money for an expensive and famous university, you can recommend to save little money for internet and an inexpensive computer. That’s it.

I’m up to try 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics next. Just curious how they do a practical part for electronics online.