How I completed 60 MOOCs

The story began in autumn 2011 with ai-class (now Udacity) — an introductory online course into artificial intelligence by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun. I knew about it from IEEE Spectrum mailing and I got excited. As it seems the other 160.000 people were. When a few other computer science courses (ml-class, db-class — both are now Coursera) ran at the same time, it became even more interesting. And later as these courses had finished, a dozen of new ones were announced. It was the beginning of the new era. And I loved it.

Since that time (Fall 2011 — Summer 2014) I successfully finished more than 60 courses. With certificate (where it was an option), or without (where they weren’t). A dozen MOOCs were dropped due to various reasons: too boring, bad material or organization, didn’t meet my expectations or just lack of time.

It seems to become my personal master degree program with the focus on biology, computer science and finance for which I selected the best courses from all over the world.

Here I want to share my experience with you, so maybe it will help someone to achieve his own goals. I’ll tell what works on this journey and what doesn’t, and how to work one’s way up most effectively if you have such a dream. If you have no such desires I nonetheless recommend you at least to try one or another online course — appetite comes with eating.