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I am learning things with moderate success. I double-majored in econ and physics, but want to add CS principles to my toolkit. I've been using open course material to do so, and I've found it very valuable. It isn't so much the lectures--they are useful, but only as valuable as a real lecture (utility varies with your learning style). It is the rest of the support material that makes sharing this stuff so valuable for independent learners. An example from iTunes U: Berkeley's CS61A has webcasts, but nearly the entire course is online. You have the textbook (SICP, available free online), and can download the lecture notes, homeworks, labs, old exams, and scheme libraries from the course website. You have most of the course (except the most valuable parts: office hours, discussion section, and no TA in your lab). But the value is in the structure of the material: learn this, build this, learn this, now build this, learn this, do this project. It slows you down, necessary because you can probably read much faster than you can 'do.' When just reading a textbook, it is too easy to burn through it and not force yourself to practice the material. With the course materials, you have a reason to pace yourself, test yourself, and have discrete goals to work toward. note: There are freenode channels (#sicp, #scheme), and StackOverflow that may give you help that approximates office hours. |