Hello, readers.
It's been a long time since my last post and I miss my blog a little too much today. Hence why, I start writing again today. Recently, too many things happened out of my control but I have a strong faith that there are silver linings behind all these. We are still fighting against the pandemic COVID-19 and students across the globe are enrolling online classes.
My recent problems had a strong relation with the current situation. Key to online classes is of course, internet and technologies. I'm highly dependent upon my laptop and internet connection because they are the essences of my sanity of doing online classes. In the past few weeks, I had problems where my mobile phone was broken, together with my laptop. What a terrible weeks I had, claimed my inner thoughts (Not ranting, just telling you this purposely). Well, no problem is unfixable. Patience is of course one of the remedies!
By the way, what I'm trying to say here is, I TOTALLY COULD RELATE TO OBSTACLES YOU'LL BE FACING WHEN YOU'RE DOING ONLINE LEARNING/DISTANCE LEARNING AND ETC. What an opportunity to experience it, to be honest! Experience is something you could not buy and it also plants a fertile seed of knowledge in your head.
In conjunction to my online distance learning, I've got my first ever experience of enrolling a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)! I had it from Coursera.
This is the MOOC I've enrolled for this week. As easy as ABC, by signing up for free on the website, and if I were to have its certificate, I need to pay about MYR200+. The certificate is from McMaster University! It is instructed by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. Who knows you might have many certificates from universities around world without having to go there physically.
The screenshot on the right is the weekly overview of the course. There are videos, texts and quizzes too!
The most interesting part is that you can pin the note on the right bar, yes! Scripted so you can read by yourselves to enhance your understanding!
This is the example of the script from one of my lesson! The highlighted part is where I pinned the notes. For the sake of reviewing or jotting down notes that I've missed during the lesson, I can easily refer back to the script later on.
After you've finished watching to a video, there will be a short quiz for you to answer. It can be in checkboxes like this or maybe short responses!
Tips: Pay attention to the questions as it MIGHT come out in your test at the end of the weekly lesson.
Then, you may also join a discussion forum! It is so cool to read responses from people from all over the world. Even some of them look like experts when you read their responses.
This is my first test on MOOC! I was quite nervous but it was so nice and...
FUNNY!
Finally, this is what you'll see once you've completed the lesson of the week! What an achievement and you'll feel proud of yourself for being able to finish a lesson. Seeing this timeline is kind of giving me motivation to finish the course. It's not that long, just within 4 weeks, you have completely learnt about learning!
Update: 29th June 2020 around 1 a.m., I've finished my first ever MOOC.
To summarise my experience of learning through MOOC, it was an impressive experience especially when the instructors mentioned things that I know or I've learnt (you know, it's easier when you can relate). Personal-paced learning taught me that I was racing with my own ability and capability.
Besides, being able to choose which course to enrol in MOOC is like a heaven in front of me. Although your current field doesn't seem to relate to the MOOC, it's totally fine. In my case, I enrolled Dr. Barbara's and Dr. Terrance's course because it was a part of our tasks in class. The content in the course is very useful for everyone especially when one's learning in school or university. In fact, as a human, we're learning from cradle to grave so that's supposed to be the pillar and relevancy of learning this course.
Education is an amazing journey that brings us pride. Hence, I won't stop learning especially when MOOC's courses are not that long to finish-- Just sit down in front of your laptop with earphones on, with a piece of paper and pen. Actually I had abandoned this course for a week before I finished because there were assignments to be focused to. After all, this course usually only took me less than 2 hours per session (minus pause for light stretching session). It wasn't that I didn't have even an extra 2 hours for the past few days, it was just that I need to an allocated, special time for me to only focus on that one particular subject at a time. For what? To ensure the quality. Having ample of time and opportunities can be part of your rizq too. Sometimes, if I was diligent enough, I'd jot down some notes on a piece of paper and if I wasn't, I'd just pin the notes on the screen-- MOOC in Coursera provides a platform for us to see learning is actually as easy as ABC. Shifting from typing assignments to relaxingly listening to the MOOC lectures hit me differently because the way the instructors delivered the content is easy to understand. They used analogies, metaphors and sometimes being funny to carve a smile on our serious faces! Hahaha. Even that's the content for the course! Of course, in a way when I was learning on How To Learn, I can directly apply the skills that were being taught and introduced. Not only I learnt the course content, I also learnt how great lecturers like Dr. Barbara and Dr. Terrance teach in classes even though it was just an online class and they were obviously don't know me. This kind of feeling to observe how they simplify neurosciences studies to make EVERYONE understand the content including those who do not have much knowledge in science like me is really great. Furthermore, I personally think many people have dreams and ambitions to pursue their studies abroad and one of them is me. Well, I don't know how it's like to study abroad but being able to learn from these great instructors is an exciting experience because I've never being taught by a foreigner (during a camping yes, but that was like 2-3 hours-- playing games). Us, learners get to choose the course that being taught from the entire globe and that makes us 'travel' around the world even when we're actually sitting on the chair in our bedroom. I'm so grateful to have this experience and I'm aiming to start a new course soon during the sem break!
Thank you for reading, till next time.