Taking classes

Did I mention before that I like learning? that I like going to (interesting) classes? :)

Recently I stumbled upon a website that hosts videos of open courses/classes from many prestigious universities like Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford and many more. Each sets of videos are actual courses conducted within a semester. Most of them have between 10 to 25 classes (and thus the same number of videos). All the courses are conducted in English. The only catch here is that the website is in Chinese, as you would need to read the titles to find the videos that you interested in.

Frankly, I am pretty amazed at the list of courses available. Course/Class topics ranged from Philosophy to Finance, to Theology, to Programming, to History and many more. Mind you, some of these topics are not purely academic, with the likes of "Profiles in Leadership", "Energy and the Environment" and "Positive Psychology" which can be useful in real life.

I must say that the amount of effort needed to put all these up or just consolidating them in one place for public viewing is enormous. Another amazing thing is that some of these courses have Chinese subtitles. Although they are far from satisfactory, these are still valiant attempts because do bear in mind that all these translations are done voluntary with no remuneration involved.

One very telling sign that I can gather from this is how hungry these (Mainland Chinese) people are for knowledge. Some of these are not easy courses, and most of them are pretty tough especially if the level of English mastery is found wanting. This is when subtitling comes in. When it comes to learning, no one comes close to the "no-nonsense" seriousness of the Chinese.

However, my only complain is that the wait for each video to load is really a pain in the a** with the snail speed of the so-called "broadband" connection in this country. So most of the time, I will download the videos (which will take between a few days to a few weeks) and watch them later.

So, even though we can't go to Oxford, Yale or Harvard, we can still "take" these classes and learn from the best...

p/s: let me know if you need pointers in getting these videos.