What do I listen to Next?

February 19, 2013 11:25 AM

I just finished all of the lectures for the MIT Open Courseware Differential Equations course, and they were exceptional. What other MIT (or other school) courses really stand out?

I am especially interested in Science and Math, but I welcome recommendations in all areas. And note, I am only interested in courses that have online video lectures; audio alone is not enough.

posted by wittgenstein to education (8 answers total)

Dan Boneh's Cryptography I on coursera has been excellent. I've also been extremely pleased with Dan Grossman's Programming Languages course. The latter, in particular, is an extremely gifted lecturer.
posted by bfranklin at 11:37 AM on February 19 [4 favorites]

Walter Lewin's Physics classes (MIT Open Courseware) are exceptional.
posted by Betelgeuse at 11:52 AM on February 19

Besides seconding Walter Lewin (duh) I highly recommend the lectures for
1) 3.091 Intro to Solid State Chemistry with Prof Sadoway: as the frosh used to say, he is smart and dreamy. It's basic chemistry, but often in a way you have not seen it presented before. He makes a point of tying in relevant modern-day applications, and he is a great lecturer.
2) 7.012 Intro Biology, doubly so if you can select the courses where Eric Lander is speaking. He's a big name, but teaches intro bio because he wants to. When I took it he missed a couple lectures because he was briefing Clinton on gene therapy or stem cells. I'm that old, and he is that good of a teacher!

Thanks to you I discover MIT even has the physical education class lectures online (PE), notably for SCUBA and weightlifting!
posted by whatzit at 12:29 PM on February 19

I'm currently taking Jim Fowler's Calc I on Coursera. He's been awesome. Really good at getting points across succinctly and with verve. His practice exercises have also been pedagogical masterpieces.
posted by ursus_comiter at 1:35 PM on February 19

I second the Boneh Cryptography course on Coursera. I also "self-studied" the Stanford compilers course there and was very impressed by the content and presentation.
posted by hwestiii at 1:41 PM on February 19

Mattuck is the best! I had him originally for 18.03 in person and was happy to revisit the course virtually.

Strang's Linear Algebra course (18.06) is quite good.

But the best video lectures I've seen recently are Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum. He tours modern physics with the actual math, not hand-waving like you'd get an a pop science book, but hones in on exactly the the math you need to understand the results, not become a physicist yourself. He's an exceptional lecturer. The math prerequisites are pretty much just having once learned (and subsequently forgotten) calculus. There's also a recent book covering the classical mechanics material.
posted by dfan at 2:26 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

Introduction to Ancient Greek History on Yale's online course website is amazing, it's a lecture series recorded by one of the most important classical historians of the century, Donald Kagan, and it's riveting.
posted by Ndwright at 3:35 PM on February 19 [3 favorites]

You need to head over to CourseTalk, where they review online MOOC courses. The website is fairly new, so the reviews is little bit skewed. Give it a year or two, it should be an excellent resource.

I'm currently taking Introduction to Finance class on Coursera. The lecturer is exceptionally good, his enthusiasm for the subject is contagious.

Data Analysis is also a very interesting class.
posted by Carius at 10:16 AM on February 21