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After logging on to a few free college courses at Coursera.org, which we wrote about last week, we have a few more choice words – and we will try to keep them printable. A lot of the courses are from major colleges, including the well-regarded Ivy League. Too bad. What we learned above all, is that everything depends on the professor, and some of them are very bad. The real duds were in the humanities and social sciences.
Our biggest hope for the future of online education is that many of the lecturers will be exposed for the shuddering mediocrities they are. It looks like either the teachers or the students are too dumb for college. Check out the reputation of the professors if you can; the famous ones are usually famous for a reason and usually the best lecturers.
Bob says the best physics lectures he ever heard were by Edward Teller, often called the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, and Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner. A lot of these stars are on YouTube. Take a look at “Day at Night” on CUNY TV; the call letters stand for City University of New York. If you have trouble getting there, try tinyurl.com/dayatnight. They have interviews with Ray Bradbury, Myrna Loy, Vincent Price, Cab Calloway, Newton Minnow, Victor Borge, and dozens more. The Internet is a gold mine, go prospecting.
