We made it to spring break without the online course imploding! Woohoo!
We were concerned (especially after Homework 2, which we knew was tough) that we were just going to lose everybody. But no—over 5,000 people are still with us, comparable to Prof. Jennifer Widom’s database course, which I hold as the benchmark.
Dave and I are impressed with the perseverance of the online students, especially given that most have full time jobs. The next time around we will probably expand the course by a week or two in order to space out the deadlines a bit. (We just extended most of the homework deadlines by a week for the online course.) We are also hiring local help (Berkeley students!) to help further debug the homeworks, improve the autograders, create new assignments and quizzes, monitor the forums more regularly, and fix the A/V quality (we know, we know).
We definitely plan to offer this course for free at least a couple of more times over the summer. Beyond that it’s unclear what will happen–it’s no secret that Coursera is a for-profit company, and we don’t know how long they will make courses available for free. However, we’re excited enough about this that we will make sure to find some way to keep getting the material out there, and if we can do so for free, we will. We’ll even get a chance to meet a few of the online students in person—they formed a study group that meets at a Starbucks close to UC Berkeley!
A big thanks to those who had faith in us and have continued to persevere through the course! And especially those who bought the book—we have 2 new chapters just about ready to go and they’ll be available as a free upgrade around two weeks from now. As promised, anyone who bought the Kindle edition will continue to get free updates until the book is content-complete.
So…as we get close to the end of the first iteration…
To those who hung on until the end despite the problems: THANK YOU for your patience, for the constructive feedback you provided via the forums, personal emails, comments on these blog posts, and however else you reached out to us. You’ve made it worthwhile for us by letting us know you were getting something out of the course!
To Instructors: if you’d like to beta test this material in your classrooms, we’ll even offer to run the autograders for you. See our beta program description if you might be interested.
To Griefers who tried to poison the forum atmosphere early on: see ya, and don’t let the door hit your a** on the way out. The smart money says that a whole bunch of companies besides Coursera are about to start trying to monetize courses like this (you can read about it in the latest Wired, in the NY Times, and elsewhere), so next time you’ll at least be paying for the right to complain.
And now…Spriiiing Breeeeaaaaak!!! Wooooo!!! (For the next week I can work from home instead of going to campus.)
P.S.: I had some technical video difficulties with “SaaS TV #2″ (salesforce.com) but it should be posted by tomorrow. SaaS TV #3 (with GitHub) should be available by April 4. It’s must-see TV.
UPDATE: I got an unexpected opportunity to speak with Raffi Krikorian, Director of Engineering at Twitter! That conversation is the basis of the just-posted SaaS TV #3. Next week we hope to post #4 (with Zach Holman of GitHub) and, hopefully, #5 (Dan Webb of Twitter talking about the present and future of JavaScript)!
#1 by ???? ??????? on April 25, 2012 - 2:42 pm
Thanks for the course. It was first online course I’ve finished.
At the end I am very satisfied with course, and can’t wait for second part.
#2 by Ramdas on April 12, 2012 - 10:57 am
Hi Armando,
I would like thank you and David for putting up a great course. I enoyed it, I couldn’t do the homeworks, but the content was great ,really gave me a intro into SAAS and Agile. I have downloaded ruby on rails on my laptop and enjoyed working with it.
Thank you
Ramdas
#3 by daniel on April 8, 2012 - 12:09 am
Hi, I’m from Peru and I want to say the SaaS course it’s really Great!! and Fun!! I love Ruby and this added very power up to my know about Ruby and Gangs
Thank you very much and a David Patterson too.
#4 by Kirill on April 1, 2012 - 10:53 pm
Thank you very much, Professor Fox and Professor Patterson, for this great course. Looking forward for the second part. Can’t wait till fall!
#5 by andypowe11 on March 30, 2012 - 12:21 am
Armando,
thanks to you and Dave for running the course – overall a very positive experience though I found the final week too hard for my liking. If you are running it again I would definitely consider splitting the TDD stuff over two weeks. Prior to that I had kept up to speed reasonably OK. There’s a longer set of thoughts at
http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2012/03/moocing-about-with-saas.html
Andy
#6 by Gerhard Paseman on March 29, 2012 - 3:31 pm
Thanks for the mention of the study group. After this week, we may get together again, most likely in the southern part of the East Bay. If you let us know your availability, I will also invite some other online students to join us as well.
Nice website, by the way. I should have read the blog at the start of the class, rather than near the end.
#7 by Haul (Russia) on March 27, 2012 - 12:36 pm
Many thx to you, mr.Fox! It’s my first steps in Ruby, RoR and SaaS, and i’m very happy, that i can get this knowledge from Berkley’s professors like you and mr.Patterson. Good job! Good guys! Good luck!
#8 by Petteri Hamalainen on March 27, 2012 - 6:09 am
Thank you Mr. Professor (and Mr. Patterson also) for the course. It actually gave me more than I expected in the beginning. I’m really happy I made it through. You have really delivered a lot of content and put effort on this.
If I had known in the beginning how much effort its going to take I probably would not have taken it, good I didn’t. There were times I was cussing at my laptop and nearly ready to give up.
At this point I’m really sorry to say I’m one of those who didn’t buy the book but realizing how much effort I would have saved if I had I think I will as soon as its out in iTunes. I believe now that the book should be made a pre-requisite. If that is going to make you a millionaire you deserve it.
One improvement request I still have. As a non-native English speaker I find it quite tiring to listen to the lecture videos. Could you make them max 10-12min long and *please* speak a little slower.
#9 by David B on March 26, 2012 - 3:02 am
Hi Armando, just writing to thank you so much for the effort in the course.
I like it very much and I would be open to pay for such kind of courses backed up (and I mean stream lined or following the path, not officially endorsed) for Universities that are top in Shanghai rankings.
Would you continue, or at least consider, in such venture if the course start to be charged a reasonable fee?
I guess it is going to be hard to get everybody happy (universities, teachers and students) but the key here is that this course is being followed actively by 5000 students. That is like 400 years of regualr teaching in a brick and mortar class. And to me means a way to get a grasp of the content and teaching style I was not lucky enough to have at university (my home university in Spain is almost as old as it’s position in Shanghai ranking).
So please, keep on, we need you!
#10 by Frank on March 25, 2012 - 5:44 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I absolutely loved everything about this course and took full advantage of it. I have been telling everyone who would listen to do the same. This is such a very rare “gem” to find. I hope you don’t get discouraged with the negative criticism and continue your great work.
I have a full time job and family. I’ve been pretty much dedicating weekends and any time I find to the course. My family has been very supportive. It reminded me when I attended Stanford for my Masters degree in CS in ‘92.
What a great opportunity. Please extend my thanks to Dave and Koushik
#11 by Doug on March 25, 2012 - 10:57 am
I’m very excited to find out that you’re offering the course again in May.
I bought and enjoyed the Kindle book. I got through 2 1/2 homeworks and got overwhelmed with competing work, family, and course commitments. Since then, I’ve been logging in but not getting the work done. So, next time I will be better prepared to get all the way through.
Thanks for all your work. Thanks for planning future classses.
#12 by Brent J. Nordquist on March 24, 2012 - 7:50 am
Congratulations to you both. For someone with a family and a full-time job the coursework did make my life pretty busy, but it was worth every minute. I filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge, and you always grow when you’re exposed to new ideas, processes, and tools.
Thanks again so much for all the extra work you (professors and staff) put into making this work, and making it available at such a low cost.
Really looking forward to part 2 in the fall. Enjoy your break.
#13 by Marcelo (from Uruguay) on March 23, 2012 - 10:23 pm
It’s 2am in my country. My wife and my two little girls are sleeping. And me, after a full day’s work, I am still struggling with the 4th homework… and I am so happy! I am learning so much! Thank you very much. The effort of a student is no match to the effort you, professor Patterson and the Staff put into this. I’m really really thankful!
The book is absolutely great! It is really clear and concise, it goes really deep into so many subjects, providing the reader with many many insights. It’s amazing how you managed to put the whole thing together so good.
The screencasts are incredibly useful. And the videos are insightful yet fun to watch. I enjoy the videos a lot!
Thank you so much. It’s a huge privilege to be your student.
P.S: Enjoy your Spring break!!