Auditing Courses on the Web: A Personal Experience with the 16-Week Course

And so the material is relatively new. This course started with a review of Java, which was good because I haven't really used Java much since AP Computer Science, going over syntax and static typing. However, it also goes over things like getting the programming version control tool, and I can safely skip it, because I've even made resources teaching Git, such as ultimate resource available on GitHub.

As I delved deeper into the course, I found that it has links to every lecture slides, and throw notes outlining all of the important information in the videos, as well as acting as guides for what I need to do next. Most of the code is available freely on GitHub, and they have crazy in-depth resources with guides, documentation, review material, and so on. And so not all courses are created equal for auditing publicly on the web.

And I do encourage you to make sure that the course you choose has everything you want before you start. But another part of why this course was a good fit for me was because it's very heavily lab and project-based. So I really enjoy projects as a method for learning, because it gives me something to work towards, and it's just more fun. Building 2048 was the first project for this class, I'm excited to see what the ones to follow involve.

The course started with a review of Java, which was good because I hadn't used Java much since AP Computer Science, going over syntax and static typing. But it also goes over things like getting the programming version control tool, and I can safely skip it, because I've even made resources teaching Git, such as ultimate resource available on GitHub. If you know any concept well enough to teach it, then that's a really good way to ensure that you understand it. It's also just a good method for going over your material, and potentially even helping other people to learn as well.

The last thing I want to touch on before passing it back to Sam is that when I first looked at this course, its 16 weeks long, it can be a little bit intimidating, you know, all of the material that I have to cover, in addition to being a full-time student, and having projects and research and so on. And so something that I like to do is compartmentalize my approach for auditing. And so I'm going to just do just this lecture this week, or just this assignment. And I don't know if that will necessarily be the most helpful thing for you.

But it's something to consider. Regardless, I'm really excited to continue auditing this course. And I hope you're excited to begin yours. So thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate it. If you found it helpful, let us know if you have any questions, please comment down below and we will make sure to answer. And if there's one note that I want to leave off on, as long as you are taking the initiative to find a course because you enjoy a topic or you want to learn it.

And you're listening to lectures, and reading notes and doing assignments. That's good enough. And so don't be discouraged if you don't finish a course or you leave it early. Because really it's about learning and getting comfortable with learning in what is a very uncomfortable way to learn. What matters is that you're learning and you're taking the initiative, and you're bettering yourself in the process.

Thank you for listening to our course, we hope that you come away feeling prepared and excited to learn by auditing courses on the web. If you're not sure where to start, try searching for your topic of interest on college compendium.org where we've curated hundreds of resources on all manner popular programming areas, or search Free Code Camp. Thank you again to Quincy Larson from Free Code Camp for supporting this course. That's all folks. Goodbye

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThere are a bunch of publicly available university courses on the internet that you can take for  free. In this video, Seth golden and Sam Crombie will teach you how to find the best course for you  and how to get the most out of the courses you take. Welcome to our video course on learning  from free public college computer science courses on the web. This video is a collaboration between  college Compendium in the amazing Free Code Camp. I'm Seth Golden, and together with Samuel Crombie,  we've put together this course helping you to be successful within self guided education.  We're going to dive deep into the autodidactic nature of learning on the internet, learning  from public courses and why you should consider trying it. We'll discuss choosing a topic and a  course to learn about that topic, and then making the most of your experience. And then at the end,  we have a couple of blogs where we review real courses and discuss our thoughts. This video  is broken into chapters that you can skip to if you're interested in a specific section. If  you prefer to read, we will have a brief written accompanying article available on Free Code Camp.  Before I end this introduction, I encourage you to check out college Compendium sometime during or  after finishing this video. College Compendium is a free, nonprofit open source compilation of over  1000 public university computer science courses in awesome colleges across North America. You can  also access public textbooks as complementary material on the site, college compendium.org.  We hope that the resources available there in this video are helpful to you. Are you excited to begin  by the end of this video, you'll be prepared to audit courses on the web and succeed in them.  Hi, everyone, my name is Sam and alongside Seth. In this series of videos, I'm going to  be talking about how to audit college courses. Now in this section before we even dive into  what that actually means, I want to take a step back and talk about learning on the internet.  And taking even another step back. Talking about learning what is learning? Well Merriam Webster  defines learning as the activity or process of gaining new knowledge or skill by studying,  practicing being taught or experiencing something. So you wake up in stubbed your toe getting out of  bed, you've learned something new, you go forage for berries, or eat raw meat, and then you get  sick boom you've learned. And so like as humans learning is us being awake and conscious. And  as we experience new things, we store that information and reference it later. So that we  can get smarter. And over time as societies kind of developed, institutions popped up to formalize  this learning in a setting that was helpful to that society. And so when we think about  today, what it means to learn through an institution, over 99% of people born in 2022,  are going to be learning up until at least Primary School in some sort of formal government mandated  environment. Which means that if you're watching this video, you've most likely experienced this  in one form or another. And so you'll be familiar with some of the characteristics of what it means  to learn through an institution. First structure, you go to the same place every day, you interact  with the same people, the same teachers, and barring differences in semesters or years,  it's really something that has been well thought out, and is very consistent in terms  of what you're learning how you're learning it, where you're learning, it stays the same,  too, there's a lot of sequence in how you learn, and that what you've previously learned, what  you're currently learning, and what you are going to learn has again, been really well thought out.  And there's an order that makes sense so that your knowledge compounds on top of itself over time.  Three, this institutional learning is compulsory, and that you don't really have to ask yourself,  Why am I learning? You know, really, the answer is because you have to, there's nothing very  philosophical about it. Otherwise, you're breaking the law, or your guardians are breaking the law.  So the incentives are you have to do it, and forth, because you are in person or  interacting with peers, and professors, and buildings and different things,  especially in Topic Areas like hard sciences, we have to interact with something. It's very  experiential. And so learning through institutions is one type of learning. And a distinct form of  learning that isn't mutually exclusive, but it's different is autodidactic learning, where a lot of  these questions that are answered for you, when learning through an institution are solved in  that determining the topic you study, where you're shutting it, when you study it and how you study  it. Those are all questions that you actually have to answer for yourself. And whether you know it  or not, you've probably engaged in kind of self guided learning at some point in your life. And  it's not a new concept. It's something that people have done for For quite a long time, and in fact,  some of our greatest minds have been autodidactic learners are an outside of a formal institution.  So it's distinct from learning in a school because there's a lot more flexibility in terms of  spatially not having to be in a location in terms of the content, you learn the form of content,  the type of content you learn, there's a lot more flexibility, in general, to the learning is  most often non sequential. And that you don't have someone telling you, you need to learn this in  ABC order, it's really up to you. And that can be very difficult. Three, there are other incentives  for self guided autodidactic learning, because there isn't someone telling you, you have to go  to school, you have to really think about why am I wanting to learn this, it's a different incentive  model. And ultimately, you may be engaging with friends who are also learning alongside you.  And you may be engaging with, you know, an expert or an instructor, but ultimately, it's  an independent activity as compared to learning in a formal institution. And when you think about  the barriers to entry, when it comes to time and cost of autodidactic, learning on the internet,  it can be really steep, because, again, in a learning environment, where you're in institution,  those questions are being answered for you, for the most part. So when you're learning  in an autodidactic manner, you're answering the questions of what do I want to learn?  Why do I want to learn it? When and how do I learn it? Are there prerequisites for what I'm learning?  Are the resources that I'm using trustworthy, accurate? How am I going to stay on schedule?  How am I going to stay motivated? How am I going to stay engaged, and again, autodidactic learning  and learning through institutions, there's a lot of overlap. And there's a lot of similarities.  But a lot of the questions that are answered in a formal environment are answered for you  when you're learning on your own. And it's a shame that this is so difficult, and that so few people  are able to really kind of figure it out. Because there are so many great resources on the internet,  that really any topic at any skill level has quite a bit of supporting material.  And so you have autodidactic learning, you have learning through institutions. These are two  distinct things, but they're also two very similar things. And so it's not a matter of  going to school or dropping out. In fact, it's a matter of how do we take what learning through an  institution can provide us in terms of what it's figured out for how to most effectively learn  and apply that to autodidactic learning and self guided study. And we'll talk about later  why we've chosen auditing college courses as a way of thinking about learning on the internet,  but as a little precursor, the answers because when you are learning through one of these courses  that's available, particularly when it comes to computer science courses. It has a lot of  structure and similarity to what you would learn in a school. And so it's a great entry point into  learning on the web, this huge umbrella of how do I learn on the internet. And we believe that  if you learn how to learn on the internet, you can really reach any goal on any topic at any place.  And so that's what we're going to be establishing in this course, and talking about going forward  learning, learning on the internet. And now this process of autodidactic learning, how  do you formalize that? And how do you get better at it? And how do you apply it to something like  auditing. So in the next section, Seth is going to talk about what it means to audit a course.  Now that we've talked about auto didacticism and discussed a broad overview of learning on the web,  what does it mean to audit a course in the American university system.  Auditing is when you take a course offered by an institution for no credit, or grade.  This primarily encompasses attending lectures without participating in examinations,  and an effort to learn more about a particular topic. Depending on the institution or platform,  you're able to access assignments or projects to work on independently without receiving feedback.  auditing a class may also require official instructor permission  in an online format. auditing a class usually entails having access to lecture videos, notes,  and or previous assignments. In other words, a complete outline of the course without the  personalized interaction with professors, teaching assistants, lab instructors for other students.  Online communities can be a substitute for such traditional class support. We encourage you to  explore methods of engaging with other learners, some of which we'll discuss later. But first,  some background. auditing classes it's long been an option for students enrolled at an educational  institution to potentially forego paying or receiving a grade for a class, whether because  of time, financial constraints or difficulty of course material since the inception of the  internet, auditing University Horses has appeared in multiple forms. One of the earliest examples of  a formalized, institution supported platform for taking online courses was MIT's OpenCourseWare,  which has operated since 2002, and posted hundreds of variations of their courses to audit.  Other public platforms have also supported this mission and posted their material for free. More  recently, Coursera was built as a premium version of this type of auditing, in some circumstances,  providing a more formal education closer to an accredited degree. College Compendium is another  free resource that you can take advantage of to find free public class resources. There are many  such resources including dozens of amazing GitHub repositories compiling computer science courses.  It may often seem that when comparing your options for learning on the web, you're choosing between  a structured or customizable curriculum. With an organized curriculum, you always know what  you're supposed to do next, you can be confident that someone who likely has a strong understanding  of the material that you aim to learn has taken the time to arrange the order of your  learning in a beneficial way. Alternatively, the benefit of choosing a customizable curriculum  to learn from several disparate resources in the order of your choice has the benefit of being  well suited to your personal needs and learning style. However, combining resources can also cause  overlapping redundant learning suppose perhaps a less comprehensive overview of your material.  Auditing courses on the web is a great resource for the intellectually curious that provides cost  conscious, low risk, organized format for academic exploration that has the benefit  of being inexpensive or free, as opposed to boot camps, online degree programs and certifications,  and structured compared to navigating videos, blogs and informational articles.  Through auditing, you gain the benefits of both an organized college curriculum  with the ability to customize your learning to your needs, combining aspects of each format for  online learning. To negate the drawbacks of both. Auditing is an amazing option if you're serious  about learning something new while being conscious about your time and cost constraints. Auditing  can also be more specialized since expensive boot camps or courses on the other end of the spectrum,  are often limited in number and scope or built for training and vocational purposes.  Specifically, learning from college computer science courses on the web, may expose you  to purely academic material, including more theoretical and low level programming concepts.  For example, a YouTube tutorial may teach you how to build a Python game. But it might not  dive quite as deep into the details regarding how the underlying code functions, you must  decide and choose for yourself the level of understanding that you're comfortable with, I find  that I'm happier when I understand the underlying processes powering the code that I'm working with.  And so when learning about neural networks, for example, I might audit a basic linear algebra  course before tackling GaNS. Auditing is just one component of an ecosystem of resources on the web  that exists to help people learn at no cost. Many of these resources complement one another and are  used interchangeably by platforms and courses supplementary, such as much of the continent  Free Code Camp. There's a lot of goodwill and open source online learning, supporting  making curriculums better, and improving the availability of information. Now that I've given  an overview of auditing, in our next section, we'll discuss why you should consider trying it.  Alright, so now that we know what actually means to audit a college course,  let's kind of summarize the last two lessons and think about, why are we telling you all of this.  So first, we talked about structured learning versus autodidactic, self guided learning.  And we talked about how the internet is really the greatest resource for self guided learning,  and how if you can learn how to learn, you can be like crazy powerful. And in the previous lesson,  Seth talked about what it actually means to audit a course on the internet. And so the question is,  bridging those two together? Why, like, why are we talking about auditing college courses within  the context of all of these different learning opportunities on the internet?  And so our idea is that auditing college courses is a great medium for getting comfortable  with more self guided learning, because when it comes to auditing college courses, it's  not nearly as easy as what it would be being in school, but it's also not nearly as difficult as  I don't know what's out there. You know, what's the content? What am I even doing here?  So really, auditing college courses is bridging formal education with this self guided learning,  because when you're auditing college courses, you have the benefit of a few things. You have  structured curriculum that is produced by an accredited institution, great institutions.  You have a Major selection of content that you can choose from,  and it's free to use. So when you think about learning in a structured way,  you have this structured curriculum that's laid out by the professor teaching the course. Right?  That's something we're familiar with. And it's produced by an accredited institution. Again,  this is content that, you know, going back to a few of those points about what it means to learn  in a structured environment, you know, that it's sequenced, right? That the content is accurate,  and that it's of good quality, on the other hand, will come towards the autodidactic side,  you have so many different types of content you can choose from, there are so many  different ways and time periods, and places you can learn from which that flexibility,  and it's free to use. So again, you're bridging self guided learning, and structured learning.  So that's why we want to help you learn how to audit college courses on the internet. So again,  thinking about, you know, why would I do this? Like, What benefit do I have? Well, let's think  about some examples. Let's say that you are a high school student, or a college student applying to a  program, and you are interested in that university or that institution? Well, what's a better way to  get to know that institution than to take a course that's offered for free by that institution,  exposing you to department, faculty, teaching style, different types of material covered? And  I don't know, maybe you can build a relationship with the professors or some of the students who  are also taking that course? Or who produced that course. So if you're interested in applying to,  let's say, MIT? Well, there's no better resource than MIT OpenCourseWare. To get a sense of the  different majors, the different content offered under the different majors, the learning style  and thinking about is this a good place for me to go attend? Well, let's say that you're currently  an enrolled student. And maybe your program doesn't offer a certain type of content or certain  course or certain topic. Well, this is another great way to broaden your horizons and learn  something that you otherwise wouldn't learn. So as an enrolled student, by auditing a college course,  you can supplement your current courses. So maybe you know, you're really bad at linear algebra.  And so you need to go look at MIT OpenCourseWare is linear algebra course to supplement that,  maybe you're just generally interested in exploring different academic areas,  and you don't want to pay for a class, or your institution just doesn't offer it.  And again, take more advanced courses than those that are offered at your school.  So whether you are on the younger side, and you have not applied to a school or in school, it's  a great way to learn about a school. If you are currently in school, or you graduated, and you're  just interested in supplementing something that you're learning, this is another great resource.  Number three, young, slightly older, and now let's say you're 20 years into your career, and you just  hate it, you're absolutely loathe it, and you want to change careers. Or maybe you do like your  career, but you just want to upskill because you want to get a promotion. While auditing a college  course is again, a really great resource for doing so because it's meritocratic Lee, making you a  better candidate for positions or just generally giving you the skills to switch careers. So if  you're looking to upskill, or change careers, you can explore new subject or career areas,  build context for exactly what you need to know and what you need to do to get a job.  And ultimately stay competitive within your job or industry and reach any goals that you've set out  to do. Now, it's getting old pretty quickly, no pun intended. There's a lot of use cases.  And just generally, I think what a lot of people watching this video can relate to  is this general use case of, you know, you're interested in learning something  new just for fun, or you just want to freshen up on an old topic. And when you think about  all of these courses out there, you can freshen up on so many skills or learn so many new skills.  If you are a, you know, mid career professional, and maybe you're not up to date with the cool  programs and frameworks that the kids are using, you can have better context for  what is being used in industry, because it's usually followed concurrently in  these courses. And so you can kind of get a refresher on what's new and what's exciting,  and just generally develop more advanced understanding of familiar topics. Those are four,  well thought out use cases and there are just so many more. I mean, there's so many reasons  for why you want to take a college course audit a college course. And I think that the overarching  reason is that one, it's a great gap. It's a great bridge between Between this gap between  structured learning and self guided learning, and that is going to make you well equipped going  forward to learn on the internet just generally however you do it. And this is a great way,  it's a great introduction to learning on the internet. And really, the second takeaway is that,  whoever you are, wherever you are, there is going to be a great use case for why you should audit a  college course. In the next section, Seth is going to help you think about what topic to choose.  Are you excited to start learning on the web? First, we need to determine the topic  you're most interested in expanding your knowledge on? What are you interested in?  Why are you interested in that topic? What are you hoping to gain from learning about it?  How excited are you about spending your free time learning your chosen topic? Did you choose the  topic for independent study? Or is it a compliment or component and with ongoing curriculum?  Your answers will help you figure out what you want to learn and why deciding on a topic to  focus your attention on can be difficult. There are so many interesting things to  learn. But that is one of the beauties of auditing, you can dip your toes into  many different areas quickly and easily. And so picking a topic is a small commitment.  If you're having trouble deciding between several, I'd consider which topics will be most useful in  the short term, or what you're the most curious about. On the other hand, if you're interested  in auditing, generally but struggling to find something you're passionate about studying,  consider actionable content. Some of this plays into assessing your goals,  which I'll discuss shortly, it's a good idea to think about what draws you to online learning.  Have you always wanted to learn how to build an app or a website or a game?  Are you looking to expand your data science skills by learning about neural networks and support  vector matrix CS? Are you trying to practice and improve your skills for coding interviews?  These motivations should be reflected in the course that you ultimately decide to audit. Once  you have a general idea of what you want to learn about. acknowledging your skill level is also  critical to picking the right course, in Siddur, how much do you know about and how much exposure  Do you have? To your topic of choice? Have you had formal instruction on this topic in the past,  a lot of courses out there are inherently sorted by proficiency. Prerequisites which  themselves contained information within the scope of the topic will help you identify  where you fall in terms of competence and where you should begin. For example,  if you're coming from a beginning standpoint, it'd be avoid auditing a graduate level of course.  Finally, as I brought up before, recognizing your goals is essential. Going into the course,  contemplate, what do you want to walk away with? Is there something specific you want to  leave the course understanding? If the course is applied? What do you want to finish having built  or having the capability to build? Are you aiming to build skills to pass an interview, if you can  identify what you're working towards, you'll be more focused and more highly value your progress.  I also want to note however, that learning is just as much about the journey as it is about the  destination. Reducing your audit to simply a list of checkboxes that you have to slog through to  achieve your goals is a negative mindset that will cause you to have an inferior learning experience,  and potentially lead to some of the pitfalls I'll discuss in greater detail later.  Let's bring together the three things I encourage you to assess  interests, skill level, and goals. And consider an example. Say I'm a student interested in app  development with limited experience. But I have a project in mind. I want to build a dating app  for scientists called radioactive dating. Where should I start? app development is a broad area,  and I need to pick a particular topic for my course. For one thing, I'll have to decide what  framework to learn. These days. There are many amazing options for app development,  I could build valuable native development skills by picking up Swift or Kotlin.  But then I'd have to compromise by only releasing the app on one platform. Alternatively, I could  learn React Native or ionic Angular to apply my existing stronger web dev skills to this project  and achieve cross platform compatibility, but with maybe slightly reduced out performance,  or I could even learn Dart based flutter and achieve similar native performance and a cross  platform codebase. But at the cost of picking up a brand new framework with less support than  either alternative. This example isn't meant to be a commentary on what the best app development  framework is, because these are all great in different situations. But this is just one  of many decisions I'm going to have to make in this scenario, without knowing much about any of  these options. And it's no small commitment either. So how should I go about doing it.  Research is key. First, I should read any of the great articles on the web  comparing and contrasting these frameworks to ensure that I'm making an informed decision  before committing to learning a particular choice. Reading course descriptions and syllabi,  is also a great way to find out this information. I would also consider my  background and my limitations as an existing web developer with little time, Ionic, Angular, or  React Native could be more desirable due to their familiarity and therefore quicker learning curve.  Now that I've picked a topic, it's time to consider my skill level. Even though I know web  development, I'm still a beginner when it comes to apps. So I'll start with something entry level.  Choosing an introductory course for React Native rather than jumping into a higher level class  will probably lead to a better experience. And if it is too easy, I can always move up, I now  have determined I interest React Native, my skill level beginner in my goal of basic dating app,  if some of these specific terms that I used in this example sound like a load of gibberish,  don't worry, making these decisions can quickly become complex. It's such a plethora of options,  the best thing that you can do is make sure that you're informed about what you really  want to be learning, you do not want to be a prospective data science student halfway  through learning PHP, before you realize it's maybe not quite the best tool for that interest.  Here's some of the popular topics students have searched for on college companion. As you can see,  Python is incredibly popular. Additionally, algorithms and data structures are close behind,  which supports the idea that auditing can also help you gain a stronger understanding  of fundamentals and foundational material. Learning from the web gives you the capability  to choose whatever it is that you're fascinated by, and focus on any aspect that interest you,  or that helps you fulfill your academic and professional goals. Assessing your interests,  skill level, and goals will help you make this decision. But ultimately, choosing the right  topic often comes down to a gut feeling of genuine excitement, or strong motivation. I encourage you  to experiment. The nice thing about having full control over your learning is that if anytime you  decide you're more interested in another topic, or another way of approaching the same topic,  you can switch to that. Explore your options and indulge your curiosity.  being intentional about what you're looking to get out of your education can be extremely  helpful in guiding your decisions, and keep you motivated as you progress through your audit.  Great, now that you have a topic in mind, and you've thought about how do I actually choose a  topic to learn, we're going to talk about choosing the right class. Now, unless you're studying  something super niche where there may only be one or two courses available on the internet to audit,  there's a lot of benefit to really thinking thoroughly before you start a course about  which course which class is right for me to take on this topic. For example, for something like  algorithms and computer science, there's a dozen or so courses on the internet that you can take.  And there are differences between those courses. And you know, a benefit of the internet  is that you have the choice between those 12. And so really thinking about which one to take  is super valuable. And that's what this section is going to talk about how to choose the right  class to audit. So first and foremost, you should be thinking about your learning type.  And I think the way to think about this is to reflect on the best classes you've taken,  and what made them effective for you. Do you like lecturing? Do you like seminar style discussion?  Do you enjoy kind of getting a brief overview about a topic and diving in yourself? Do you  like being guided thoroughly with examples by the professor? Thinking about what classes you've  taken, and exactly why they were effective for you is super helpful for thinking about the type  of content you're going to be learning and what styles you're most accustomed to. Conversely, also  thinking about which courses you've taken, that you just hated. And again, why that was. And you  know if it's about the content, that's one thing, but I think the important thing to reflect on is  what you were doing in the classroom and what made it effective. What made it ineffective.  And considering that as you're choosing courses, because you'll see that, again,  different professors, different universities, same topic. They teach a lot of this in very different  ways based on sequence based on the explanation, they may start from one angle compared to another  professor. So think about how do you learn and how should you factor that into the course you choose?  Learning type very important to time commitment. Some courses are extremely thorough, extremely in  depth and maybe just doesn't fit with your time commitment, or isn't something you can stretch  out over multi For weeks, so thinking about how much time you have to commit to the class,  will you have the time to go through the optional readings, and the notes that come with the class  to do the assignments, which often come with a lot of these classes that you audit online?  What can happen to change your time commitment maybe in the next few weeks, or months or a year?  And how does that impact your goals for the course?  Also thinking about if you've taken online courses previously, what was your time commitment, then?  How did that work out and you know, adjusting it based on what your schedule is like?  Because courses again, can really vary in how much content they offer, you could have an algorithms  course that does an hour on a certain topic, just straight up high level basic introduction to this  topic, versus another course, where you have a two hour lecture, another hour of reading in another  assignment. So thinking about time commitment, when choosing a course to audit is very important.  Third is the institution, and how the content is being delivered. And so if you're one of those  individuals who maybe is interested in a certain university, or you trust that this university  has the best content in thinking about, is there an institution in mind? You know, I personally  think that the quality across universities is pretty normalized. And wherever you go to audit,  of course, you're going to get great content. But if you have an institution in mind,  you really should be thinking about why and and should I choose that institution if they offer a  course on that topic? And you know, when thinking about the content and how it's being delivered,  thinking about, again, not just the lecture style, or your learning style, but is the lecturer  writing on a chalkboard? Are they referencing written notes? Or their PowerPoint slides?  Is it audio only? Is it a video lecture with slides? Is it a video lecture without slides?  Is it a professor who just goes through the Python documentation to teach you how to learn Python,  a lot of courses do it differently, and getting an idea of where first where you may be interested  in learning the content from, but also how the content is being delivered is super important.  Because some people really love slides, other people could not care for them anymore. So  thinking three about the institution and how the content is being delivered.  And so thinking about these different factors for choosing which courses to audit,  your learning type, your time commitment, your personal goals, what institution, you want to  take it from how the content is being delivered. That's something that can be difficult to assess  if you're talking about 1520 courses on a topic. And when you think about reviews, and comments,  people leave again, it can be hard to assess. And so what I recommend is taking an experimentation  approach to evaluating these courses. So instead of having to audit 20 separate courses on one  topic, you can get a sense of each one. Before you dive into a particular one. You can read the  course description, the syllabi, any high level information about the structure and delivery of  the course, learning goals, prerequisites for the course, institution and non institution specific,  and just materials to review before you take. So reading just a general description  about the course and the syllabus is super important. And once you've evaluated that,  another thing you can do, if you feel comfortable with proceeding with that course, and if it  matches what you're looking for, go to the first lesson, work through the lecture material,  or through any supplementary material, and kind of take note about how the material is presented.  If your comprehension has improved as a result of it,  you know, if the content is far beyond what you understand, or if it's, you know, far behind what  you're understanding, you need something more advanced, or more beginner. And just thinking  about, Okay, after this first lesson is this a course I'd be comfortable fully auditing through.  So before you really dive into a specific course, on this topic that you've chosen, think about what  will make this course successful for me, and what course would be the best in theory for me to take  for you to learn that topic. And don't feel like because you've committed to a course that you need  to follow through with entirely, or that you need to check out the first 10 lessons of every course  before you take it. You can get a great sense of what the course is going to offer you before  you really dive in. And by doing this, you're going to save yourself a lot of time and grief,  trying to learn based on a style you're not comfortable with or a timeframe or type of content  or lecturing style, whatever it is, that doesn't match what you're looking for.  Let's get the most out of your audit. Putting strong consideration into scheduling  accountability and available resources will We'll help you succeed. The most  difficult part of taking an online course often isn't getting started,  but rather pushing forward when the work becomes more time consuming and difficult.  Just like any in person course, understanding your time commitment within the context of the class  should help you may more effectively evaluate your schedule going forward.  How can you work your audit into your schedule? If there's a time sensitive nature to learning your  selected material? Think about how the quality of your learning might be impacted by clicking PIs.  What information do you need to know, it may make sense to prioritize some parts of a course  over others. While educators and content creators often put a lot of thought into the organization  and structure of their course, that doesn't always mean it's the perfect fit for you.  For example, when learning from a public online course on data structures,  the first few weeks might be a review of C++. If you already know C++ really well,  and you feel confident that you don't need to start from scratch, you can move forward and  always return if necessary. While we caution against skipping material when possible.  One of the biggest draws of online learning is certainly this ability to customize your learning  if you return to the earlier contemplation that led you to choose a specific topic and of course,  what are you hoping to get out of this course and therefore, what schedule enables you to make the  most of your learning if you have no frame of reference for how much you'll need to study?  Course web pages often have times lists found them for when students attended class during the in  class offering if applicable, you can potentially use that information to figure out what the weekly  time commitment was for other students and then extrapolate on that for your needs.  Everyone has slightly different levels of commitment. If you're ambitious, you're free to  start strong with several hours of study a week. If possible, try to avoid overloading yourself  from day one, which can lead to feeling burnt out. But at the same time, learning often and on a  regular basis is a good method for success. Above all, I find that consistency is key. If you can  learn a little bit every day or even every other day, even setting aside half an hour that can lead  to sustainable and impactful learning. staying on track is hard. Don't feel bad if you miss a day.  One of the easiest things that you can do though to help you meet your scheduled milestones is  turn on notifications for your calendar or use it to do list out when your phone notifies you  when it's time to learn. That's an easy way to remind yourself and keep yourself on track.  I know that setting aside designated blocks of time in my calendar really helps me with  following through on my audit. However, that might not work well for you. And so it is  important to determine how you want to set your pace and track your progress early on.  Even if you use traditional paper and pencil, it's maybe a good idea to not just wing it.  I think of self guided learning is similar to running. When you first start, it's pretty  difficult to even run a mile. But as you keep at it, it gets easier and easier. And eventually  you feel as though it's a natural part of your lifestyle that you feel weird without doing.  And also like running you feel amazing when you're done. Online courses can be long. Breaking  your chosen course down into smaller short term goals is another easy way to make your path feel  less daunting or intimidating, and also more rewarding if you value extrinsic validation.  And you can also use short term milestones as motivation by treating yourself when you achieve  those goals. For example, you can earn as you learn by rewarding yourself with a dessert after  a successful learning session. I enjoy watching an episode of whatever my family is currently  watching at the time, after meeting my goal of listening to a lecture recording for the day.  And even if you set aside plenty of time daily to learn that time is worth significantly less  if you don't stay engaged. Avoid multitasking and double screening. If you're feeling bored.  That's a possible indicator that this might not be the right course for you.  But try to be persistent. Remember, it's impossible to fail a free online course with  no grades. If you're struggling with something take your time. Review the material in chat  with other people learning online for help. And speaking of chatting with other online learners,  that is probably one of the best ways to ensure your desired outcome of finishing the course.  While you're probably fairly self motivated and driven to even be listening to me right now,  everyone can do with some peer support from time to time. Finding someone to hold you accountable  is a great way to make sure you put in continuous effort. Find a friend to audit the class with you.  Find someone to ask you about your progress often, or naturally put yourself into a position  to get asked about your work. Try accountability study tools like ours. Shout out to my guy calyx  to keep me motivated. They're also new Many great resources available for online learners  from StackOverflow and GitHub forums. If you're not familiar with those, they're basically the  twin pillars holding up the entire programming community, to Reddit communities and discord  servers. There are several awesome places to seek out other learners for help and support. And if  you run into any issues with a problem set, or you encounter a bug, but you just can't figure it out,  chances are there are people who will help. There are several common pitfalls  that auditors often experience. But they all ultimately lead to the same thing, not completing  the course. Throughout your audit, evaluate if you notice any of these things becoming habits,  setting aside enough time for your audit can be difficult. Your time is valuable and easily felt.  You'll have to decide how important your audit is to you and how to prioritize it in your schedule.  Your initial plan doesn't need to be set in stone, and feel free to readjust as needed to better fit  your lifestyle. At the same time, though, as we've discussed before, it's important to keep a measure  of consistency. If you're feeling overwhelmed or dealing with difficult material, take a break  and ask for help. When you set aside half an hour to learn, consider putting your phone on Do Not  Disturb or the equivalent. If you're spending your allotted studying time responding to texts  or browsing Twitter, that doesn't really count I can, you know, I've done it too.  It's relatively common midway through a course to lose energy or focus.  While it's healthy to take a break. If it's important to you that you cover all the course  material, make sure to set a date to return your learning in advance. So it doesn't become an  over extended hiatus where you begin to forget important information. Not engaging with other  online learners is another common trap. There was a thriving community surrounding online education.  Take advantage of it. You're welcome to join forums and ask for feedback and advice. And I  really want to emphasize this. Don't be afraid to ask for help. You should not contact the creator  of the course unless they explicitly say you can I say that from experience. You should also search  the web for your question first. But if you don't find a relevant answer, other learners in online  communities will be happy to help. Even if you're confident in your understanding of that material,  binding social support and community with other people learning on the web,  even if you're focusing on different topics can be beneficial for your mental health and make you  feel more engaged. One of the main differences between auditing a course online and taking  it at an accredited institution but besides receiving official credit for it, of course,  is the personal support that you receive from teachers, teachers, assistants, peer mentors,  and friends. If you can find other online learners that fill some of those roles,  it may improve your experience, you may not find anyone and interacting with people over  the web can always involve some level of risk, but it might be worth a shot. Finally, although  I encouraged you to set your own pace before, I'd also warn against flying through material.  Watching lectures a two times speed will mean that there'll be over faster, but your  understanding and retention of the material might be hampered to skipping material can also be fine  if you're really confident you know it already. But sometimes it's nice to review things  you're choosing to spend your time learning this so I again encourage you to find value in the  process of learning just as much of the end goal of gaining this knowledge. If your goal from the  outset is to thoroughly cover all the material in the course. Consider keeping these pitfalls  in mind as you learn. You can also enrich your learning through complementary resources. Often,  educators will link to relevant complementary material for your use. From public textbooks like  those linked on the college Compendium textbooks page to YouTube series to other Free Code Camp  courses and articles, you can expand far beyond the extent of the resources provided in the course  you're currently auditing. You can even dive into academic papers with sites like papers with code,  an amazing resource for anyone looking to improve their understanding of cutting edge technologies.  If you're auditing a course on the web, chances are there will exist and answered  any questions you encounter. Whether you're in need of clarifying explanation, or you're  curious about the deeper workings of the subject, there will be something or someone able to help.  All of this is to say that there's a lot of actions you can take to improve your auditing  experience and make the most of your time we encourage you to do so. You've added to the course  what next? Before moving on, ensure you've fully reviewed the material and understand everything  at the importance. This little point to doing this if you walk away without a strong comprehension  of the content. At this point, you've completed your course. Have you reached your goals. Do  you have all the skills you'll need for that project you wanted to build or an internship  position that you've been aiming for. Either way, congratulations. Finishing a course is an  incredibly impressive achievement and you should feel amazing. Be proud of yourself. A successful  audit demonstrates strong motivation and effort. But there's always more to learn. Your online  education is never finished. The question is simply about how to proceed in the short term. If  you're looking to learn a specific skill set, like machine learning and data science, chances are  one course won't be enough. Therefore, sequencing courses to effectively audit an unofficial degree  can be incredibly useful. There are many, many resources on the web, where people have compiled  courses to create pathways for becoming highly skilled through successive auditing, for example,  starting with a high level math and introductory Python course, then learning data structures,  then learning an overview of neural networks, and then a more specific course on generative  adversarial networks. In other words, following a trajectory similar to a real curriculum,  where you start with foundations of a topic and build on those gradually becoming more specific.  Another incredibly valuable part of auditing public courses on the web, is the ability to  mix and match courses from various sources. You can learn one topic from a school like MIT, then  the next one was universities such as Harvard, and then the next summer college like Berkeley.  This ability to interchange your learning allows you to pick the classes that appeal  the most of you, potentially creating a learning experience with more than the sum of its parts.  Math is fundamental to programming, especially so for data science.  If you're looking to audit computer science, it's also worth considering adding classes covering  concepts and statistics, calculus, linear algebra in discrete math to your custom curriculum.  These courses will provide a stronger foundation for your understanding of key concepts in  computer science, such as algorithms and data structures. Before I wrap this section up,  I wanted to give a shout out to the GitHub Student developer pack. If you're a student enrolled in  any educational institution, then this is a no brainer bundle of free resources for programming,  including freedom in hosting, and the Pro versions of JetBrains. IDE is, freedom is  a central theme of online self guided learning. Choose your own content based on your interests,  choose your learning format, your teacher and the source of your class, choose your schedule,  choose what you learn next, it's all up to you. With the knowledge you've gained in this video,  you're informed to make these decisions and achieve your goals through auditing.  Up next, we have a few examples of we audited real courses blog style,  based on the information discussed in this course. Okay, one way that I learned is through  examples. And so in the spirit of learning through examples, Seth and I are going to  take you through an example of what we just talked about summarizing all of it, essentially  thinking about a topic, thinking about a course to take, evaluating it, and ultimately auditing it.  So let's get started. For me, recently, I've been doing two things. I've been working  on coding interviews, and I have been working on personal projects. And doing both of those  things has taught me something about myself. And that's that I am really bad at solving problems  in a computationally efficient manner. I found that a lot of coding interviews, and also, with  just side projects I work on, I'm usually solving things in a very belaboured manner,  I could probably consolidate that down. In addition to kind of what I've been doing.  In a few terms, I have an algorithms course, that I'm going to be taking that I'm super  excited for. But I also don't really know much about algorithms. And I have a feeling that  maybe taking an algorithms course, will not only prepare me for what I'll be taking in the future,  but also like for now may help me with like coding interviews and understanding time complexity,  memory, and just like computational intensity. So I think I haven't taken an algorithms course  before. So I think I'm going to take an algorithms course. And you know,  I have classes that start pretty soon. So I don't have a lot of time, probably a week. And I think  I'm just going to spend like an hour or two a day watching lectures, maybe taking notes and just  getting a sense of what I'm in for. Maybe it'll solve my coding interview woes in the short term  and long term. I'll be prepared for my algorithms course. So lucky for me, there's a few algorithms  courses quite a few because it's really the core part of a lot of computer science curriculums.  So when I go to college compassion I'm just going to search for algorithms in the top right, and you  know, see which courses I can come across. And you can already see there are so many a Waterloo  design analysis of algorithms course. There's an MIT design and analysis, you Toronto, Washington.  Looks like some of these courses are pretty advanced. And I'm very far from being advanced  when it comes to algorithms. So I think I'm going to look for a course that isn't too advanced.  So looking through these, okay, MIT fall 2011, An Introduction to Algorithms course,  I don't think algorithms change like that often. So maybe fall 2011. That will work. It says This  course provides an introduction to mathematical modeling of computational problems. It covers  common algorithms, algorithmic paradigms, and data structures used to solve these problems.  Pretty straightforward. I'm personally a fan of MIT OpenCourseWare, they never really miss when  it comes to these courses. So and they have video lectures. So I think this could be a good course  to take. So I'm just going to open this in a new tab. And I'm actually just gonna look at  the syllabus and get a sense of the prerequisites and what the timeframe was when people were taking  this course, when it was recorded. So looks like two sessions a week, one hour session. Okay,  that's good. I can do one hour lecture sessions, also recitations two sessions a week,  one hour session. So it seems like there's a bit of supplementary material when it comes to  learning in this algorithms course. Let's see prerequisites a firm grasp on Python.  I don't know if Firm is the right word, but I know Python, a solid background and discrete again,  solid. I don't know about that. But I've I've taken a discrete mathematics course.  And they even link to courses, Introduction to eeks, and mathematics for computer science. So  I think that I have covered those areas sufficiently. So this is perfect, based  on my prerequisites. They also are linking a book a textbook to by Introduction to Algorithms, and  another one that uses Python, okay. Lectures and recitations are responsible for material presented  in lectures, including oral comments. Okay, problem sets, seven problem sets during the course  of the semester. So I go once every two weeks, quizzes grading policy. Great. So that seems  doable. And you can see unit one, algorithmic thinking peak finding models of computation,  Python cost model document distance, and problem set, one that corresponds to that. So you know,  that's five lectures right there in our each and a problem set. I think that could be a good start  for understanding the lectures. And you can see the problem set one PDF is here, the codes here,  and oh, even has the solutions, which is going to be super helpful. And yeah, this, this definitely  looks doable. So this looks like a great course for me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to  watch the first lecture video and see if it's doable, if I understand the content,  and then go from there, maybe even start on Problem Set one, and I will see you then.  Great, so I've just finished watching the first lecture. And I found it to be pretty much in line  with where I'm at, with my understanding. In fact, the first like 10 minutes or so, the professor  reviewed, like what is to come in the course, which I found to be super helpful in clarifying,  just going forward with like, a future material. And I took some notes here. And actually, I looked  at the lecture notes that are corresponding to the lecture. And it's interesting, because it's  really a consolidated version of the one hour lecture. So I may just end up looking at these  for like doing problem sets and stuff. But yeah, you know, at a cursory glance,  looking at the first lecture, it seems like this is a course that I can, you know, get a few,  get a few lessons out of, and I can follow along with the content, I don't find it too fast or too  slow. And I feel like you know, now he's actually solving one of the problems that I saw in an  interview. So it looks like this is going to be a good course for the purpose that I'm looking for.  And it seems doable over the next week. So I'm ready to audit this course. I think it's going  to be great. I'm excited to see where it goes. Well, I hope you enjoy it. Sam sort of informally  giving you his thought process behind using the things you've discussed in this video to choose  the course. I'm going to try and do the same but as I already watched the first few lectures  I'm going to offer a more retrospective approach. So I chose to audit a data structures course.  And I really want to learn the logic behind a lot of the abstractions that I use in programming.  I've heard of these concepts, linked lists, tree and graph, traversal, and even different  methods of sorting. But I don't really have a strong understanding of them. And I know that  understanding data structures is really critical to being able to make decisions as a programmer.  So the course that I picked is CS 61 of the data structures from Berkeley.  And I found it through college Compendium just by searching for data structures on the website.  And this course is special because it has an enrollment of 1600 students. And so  what that means is that the court is designed in a way that doesn't require much teacher interaction.  And the teachers themselves explains this in the first lecture, like they give every  kid a minute of time, it would take more than a day. And so in addition to that,  it's also very recent, it was made in spring of 2021. And so the material is relatively new.  And it's very nice, because it has links to every lecture slides, and throw notes outlining all of  the important information in the videos, as well as acting as guides for what I need to do next.  Most of the code is available freely on GitHub. And they have crazy in depth resources with  guides, documentation, review material, and so on. And so not all courses are created equal for  auditing publicly on the web. And I do encourage you to make sure that the course you choose  has everything you want before you started. But another part of why this course was a good fit for  me, was because it's very heavily lab and project based. So I really enjoy projects as a method for  learning. Because it gives me something to work towards. And it's just more fun. Building 2048  was the first project for this class, I'm excited to see what the ones to follow involve. So this  course started with a review of Java. And this was good, because I haven't really used Java much  since AP Computer Science, going over syntax and static typing. But it also goes over things like  get the programming version control tool, and I can safely skip it, because I've even made  resources teaching get, such as ultimate resource available on GitHub. And what I want to say here  as well is that if you know, any concept well enough to teach it, then that's a really good  way to ensure that you understand it. It's also just a good method for going over your material,  and potentially even helping other people to learn as well. The last thing I want to touch  on before passing it back to Sam, is that when I first looked at this course, it's 16 weeks long,  it can be a little bit intimidating, you know, all of the material that I have to cover,  in addition to being a full time student, and having projects and research and so on.  And so something that I like to do is compartmentalize my approach for auditing.  And so I'm going to just do just this lecture this week, or just this assignment.  And I don't know if that will necessarily be the most helpful thing for you.  But it's something to consider. Regardless, I'm really excited to continue auditing this course.  And I hope you're excited to begin yours. So thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate it.  If you found it helpful, let us know if you have any questions, please comment down  below and we will make sure to answer. And if there's one note that I want to leave off on,  as long as you are taking the initiative to find a course because you enjoy a topic  or you want to learn it. And you're listening to lectures, and reading notes and doing assignments.  That's good enough. And so don't be discouraged if you don't finish a course or you leave it early.  Because really it's about learning and getting comfortable with learning in what is a very  uncomfortable way to learn. What matters is that you're learning and you're taking the initiative,  and you're bettering yourself in the process. Thank you for listening to our course,  we hope that you come away feeling prepared and excited to learn by auditing courses on the web.  If you're not sure where to start, try searching for your topic of interest on college  compendium.org where we've curated hundreds of resources on all manner popular programming areas,  or search Free Code Camp. Thank you again to Quincy Larson from  Free Code Camp for supporting this course. That's all folks. Goodbye\n"