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Ask HN: Courses like Coursera or Udemy but without the videos?

108 points| rgovind | 10 years ago | reply

Hi All,

Happy new year.

As of 2016, I realised that video based courses in Coursera and Udemy are not ideal and are a drain on efficiency. You cannot skim through content in videos and you are constantly wondering what you will miss if you forward the video. You will have to adjust to lecturer's speed rather than choose your own speed. You cannot listen to videos in noisy environments.

What I would like to see is repository of paid (or free) tutorials, which uses text and pictures to convey information rather than videos. Googling only shows scattered tutorials, but not the equivalent of Coursera. If anyone here please knows of such a resource, please let me know.

55 comments

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[+] RogerL|10 years ago|reply
Lorena Barba at GW agrees with you (and so do I). Here is one of her MOOCs: http://openedx.seas.gwu.edu/courses/GW/MAE6226/2014_spring/a...

She uses python & Jupyter Notebook to present the course, not video, for the reasons you mentioned. She is one of the people who got me started writing my book in Jupyter Notebook (mine is not part of a MOOC).

I'm pretty sure that what you are looking for doesn't exist in large scale. Someone already mentioned this, but probably the MIT OCW is the closest (many classes have no video, only lecture notes).

[+] sotojuan|10 years ago|reply
Honestly for difficult technical subjects in technology, science, or mathematics, nothing beats a good book with exercises along with lecture videos or notes (just like MIT OCW gives you). There are some great Coursera courses, but many don't do the subject justice.
[+] edtechdev|10 years ago|reply
I usually learn best when there is a reason, an immediate benefit, for doing so. Find a project that interests you and start working on it. You'll see what you need to learn more about to get it done, and that provides the motivation and context for learning it.

If that's not enough or too hard, find someone who knows what you want to learn, and talk with them, work with them.

Sorry if that's vague, but provide some more details about what you want to learn and/or your goals, and more help can be provided.

But your intuitions are right - video is not ideal at all for learning. Most people stop watching after the first 4-6 minutes (http://blog.edx.org/optimal-video-length-student-engagement). See also: http://linkis.com/papers.ssrn.com/sol3/mYfya http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/in-online-courses-stu... http://www.wired.com/2015/08/learning-physics-tough-get-used... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/07/01/why... http://pgbovine.net/publications/edX-MOOC-video-production-a... http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/03/10/pedagogical-roles-for-vid...

[+] rgovind|10 years ago|reply
>> usually learn best when there is a reason, an immediate benefit, for doing so. Find a project that interests you and start working on it. You'll see what you need to learn more about to get it done, and that provides the motivation and context for learning it. If that's not enough or too hard, find someone who knows what you want to learn, and talk with them, work with them.

I know what you are saying. But, I am not able to find someone in my immediate circle who can teach me to become good at CSS. I have various web projects in mind, I have the motivation and need to learn to it. Thats how I started doing MOOC in web development. Unfortunately, I find that it is very inefficient. Plus finding courses which are aimed at intermediate skill people is tough(For example I know all CSS properties, but cannot use them coherently to take care of rough edges).

[+] dimva|10 years ago|reply
I think this is because it's much easier to lecture in front of a camera than to spend time creating an easy-to-follow tutorial with illustrations. Compare the number of professors who lecture undergraduates with the number who write textbooks or blog posts for the general public.
[+] dudul|10 years ago|reply
> paid (or free) tutorials, which uses text and pictures to convey information rather than videos.

Isn't it called a "book"? :)

I'm with you, I often find videos on Coursera et all pretty useless and inefficient. More effective for me to just buy a book on the topic I want to learn about.

[+] RogerL|10 years ago|reply
No, a book is called a "book", and a class is not a book.

Classes entail teaching, homework, grades, a final exam, and TAs. You are supported in your learning efforts.

A few books/textbooks are structured for self-learning, but most are not. Just picking up a textbook on fluid dynamics (say) and expecting to work through it without support and guided practice is a pipe dream for all but the most dedicated autodidact.

[+] rgovind|10 years ago|reply
Kind of true. It is called a book. But I want something in between a book and a blog post/tutorial. Not sure what it is though. And if it is structured as a course, I am more likely to stick to it and complete it.
[+] Adam_O|10 years ago|reply
Reading the replies in this thread got me thinking it would be nice if an online course site allowed searching within all the subtitles of all the videos it hosts, and would provide results to all videos containing the searched keyword so you could get access to many explanations and side-notes about a concept, fast.. I think it goes against their business model though.

Also, many MOOCs do support optional texts, but they are not always free.

Perhaps the right mix is somewhere down the middle.. a course that gives you all the course materials in a jupyter notebook + makes help videos available as well, and the student can pick their desired learning path (like http://cs109.github.io/2015/pages/videos.html)

Finally, I really like those "Manga guide to" books from No Starch Press, but they are more like fun supplementary resources.

[+] bphogan|10 years ago|reply
> it would be nice if an online course site allowed searching within all the subtitles of all the videos it hosts,

Yes it would. But a lot of the videos I see are not subtitled. They should be though, for accessibility purposes.

[+] vikp|10 years ago|reply
This is very specific to data science for now, but I'm working on Dataquest (https://www.dataquest.io), which has interactive explanations and diagrams. It's almost entirely reading theory and explanations + writing code. It's hard to get broad coverage like udemy/coursera, but it's a problem we'd love to work on in the future.

I've liked scotch.io for some dev things, and thinkster.io for some Angular/frontend.

Also check out these IPython notebooks for a ton of topics: https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of-interes... .

[+] relkor|10 years ago|reply
If you are willing to wait 8 weeks, my budding company is building a search engine for explanations of things that could help you find what you are looking for. I too have had this problem in finding educational resources, and we are working to improve on the usual googleing experience. I cannot promise much right now, but you are not alone in your search. Let me know if you would like a beta key?
[+] relkor|10 years ago|reply
As I mentioned above, we are some weeks out from having an MVP. Our current sprint is actually building a frontend for the search engine. If you are still interested, please send me an email (in profile) and I will ping you back in about 2 weeks when we have something for you to interact with.
[+] krmmalik|10 years ago|reply
I'd be interested as well please. Khurammalik[dot]me@google's email service
[+] darjeeling|10 years ago|reply
I'd love to try out your service. Thank you!
[+] rgovind|10 years ago|reply
Cool. Happy to test drive. Email in profile.
[+] rrecuero|10 years ago|reply
Same here. Can I get a beta key as well? :)
[+] thelooser|10 years ago|reply
I would love to get the beta key.
[+] zhte415|10 years ago|reply
I agree. The key reason is the need for the audience to be linear. That's what I'm addressing in the LMS I'm putting together for my company ;)

* Videos really do add a lot of value. But all video... makes it into a movie, despite exercises that can be done later, it is a movie experience.

* Videos create a personal touch and engagement with a user. That is valuable for a lot of people.

* Video in something technical lets others see workflow. I great example was for a beginner introduction to Spring where the instructor showed how to set getters and setters in Eclipse. Fantastic quick kill in terms of delivering something useful that wouldn't work in text.

* A lot of instructors don't like putting their face on the internet. They just don't.

* A combination of media all on one page is what I'm going for, and have mainly achieved. It does turn the page a bit long (of course assisted by sidebars) but text, video example, some interactive content, some links to resources be it citations, PDFs or other, work very well.

At least, for me.

And I'm doing this in a second language, Chinese. Nightmare, but really interesting. If you're in the LMS space and interested in getting in contact, email me at my QQ address in profile.

[+] FanaHOVA|10 years ago|reply
What works for me is playing the vids at 1.75x speed when I feel like there isn't a high density of concepts being explained. Sometimes I just watch them at 1.25x the whole time because the lecturer is slow paced. Try experiment with this stuff and see if it's just the video format that you don't like or the speed in which it's served.
[+] bayesianhorse|10 years ago|reply
One point of MOOCs is that they are not text books. That does not mean text books are bad or that MOOCs are all you'll ever want.

Some MOOCs create video content totally "from scratch", but usually they build on the lecturers' ability to hold a lecture in the topic, often honed through years of repeated lecturing on the same topic.

[+] wernercd|10 years ago|reply
You can be text based learning without being a text book.

I'd like to see less emphasis on Video learning, because it definitely has it's limits. Even if a teacher is good at it, through years of experience.

Not saying I don't like them per-se, but they don't seem to stick for me.

[+] abustamam|10 years ago|reply
I totally agree with you. I was a video person up until a few days ago actually, when I bought React Indie Bundle (which came with 4 books and 3 Udemy courses). I found myself in a lot of situations where I could not watch videos but I could read (i.e. when I would be without my computer). So I became more of a book person. I'd read concepts, and see if I can apply the concepts when I get to my computer.

I found it to be a more enriching learning experience over copying what someone does on a video and only kind of learning it.

However, to answer your question, there are some free courses like the famous Rails Tutorial [1] and Learn X the Hard way [2].

[1]: https://www.railstutorial.org/book

[2]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

[+] itg|10 years ago|reply
Look at university websites for the courses you're interested and get the recommended textbooks. Sometimes the professor will also have slides posted online.
[+] kaybe|10 years ago|reply
Or, if you're lucky, they have also published a lecture script online which may have book quality. You can also try asking if it's known to exist but not available.
[+] arikrak|10 years ago|reply
I thought along similar lines [1] so I created Learneroo.com to teach programming and more with interactive tutorials. I currently don't have time to add additional courses or to create more visual content, but you can explore what's there. (I'm still interested in finding someone to develop content for it or even take over part of the site.)

[1] You can read some of my posts on topic at https://www.learneroo.com/blog

[+] lovelearning|10 years ago|reply
Every Coursera course I've taken had associated notes and presentations. Some were prepared by the professors or TAs themselves, while others were by fellow students and put up in the forums. Coursera forums are goldmines - if you are not in the habit of participating there, you are missing out on a lot.
[+] dudul|10 years ago|reply
All the courses I took had such notes, true. But I often found that they were of poor quality, sometimes completely outdated compared to the video.
[+] seanconnor|10 years ago|reply
Saylor Academy (disclosure: I work there), mentioned also by StrawberryPi on this thread, consists of free content curated into complete certificate courses. Video makes an appearance, but does not dominate.

We are a small non-profit focused on open education; everything is open to browse at https://learn.saylor.org so it's easy to get a sense of what one can expect from our courses.

Topics include CS, business, art history, bio, chem, physics, poli sci, economics, and a few others, comprising about 100 courses in all.

And for anyone who wants to hack on their own, we have about 200 inactive courses that can be forked on GitHub: https://legacy.saylor.org

[+] revorad|10 years ago|reply
I'm building a new online learning site and this is one piece of feedback I have received a lot. So I'm working on multiple formats, including text, audio and video. Our first course on Rubymotion is entirely in text and will be launching soon.

Please check it out if you are interested - http://learnetto.com. Also feel free to email me with any comments and feedback - [email protected]

[+] pshyco|10 years ago|reply
Problem with Coursera / Udemy is they just scratch the surface. Almost all courses are introductory and don't go into depth.
[+] jharohit|10 years ago|reply
MIT OCW? Also I think edX has really well done videos(and video controls) as compared to Coursera or Udemy.
[+] omarshaikh|10 years ago|reply
Packt Publishing has great books to jump start on many technologies. The books are written by programmers, for programmers. They have a library subscription that I use.

https://www.packtpub.com/

[+] psibi|10 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure about the quality of the recent Packt books. They seem to be concentrating more on quantity rather than quality. I was approached by them to write a book on a topic that I wasn't good at!

Also incidents[0] like this don't really make a good impression about them.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1rj2jq/book_haskel...