My MOOC journey: chapter 1 - intro

Why?

This series of posts will be part of the ISKM61 course, in which we’re tasked with documenting our journey through online study. I’m supposed to study for at least 10 weeks, so there will be a lot of posts, and I might end up boring some of you—feel free to skip them, but if you’re looking for inspiration, you can read about what’s great about the courses I’ve chosen, what study habits help, or what to avoid.

I haven't taken many online courses yet—I prefer learning in person with other people—but I guess I should learn how to do it, because it's easier to balance with work, and my life chapter as a student might be coming to an end soon.

What?

I will be taking two courses:

1. Ethics of AI—a free, self-paced course from the University of Helsinki

2. HOW TO CREATE A BOARD GAME—an intensive course purchased through the SKVOT portal

Today I’m starting my first course. It’s the perfect format for studying during the semester, since it doesn’t have fixed deadlines or sections that need to be completed all at once. The second course will have regular meetings, but it will take place in December and January, so I’ll be able to finish it by the end of the exam period, but it won’t be a additional load for me right now.

My first impressions

I can't really say that anything on the course surprised me, because I've already taken a similar course on the same platform—Building AI. Overall, though, I like the balance between technical terms and simplicity, as well as the in-browser translation feature, which helps me better understand even the more difficult passages in the text. It seems like the assignments won’t be as practically oriented this time, since it’s a theoretical topic, but personally, I also see the entire course as inspiration for how to teach AI ethics. For example, the assignment to write a Twitter comment in the first chapter really caught my attention. I also liked the inclusion of the peer review concept; for me, it is more motivating to produce high-quality answers than being evaluated by an automated tool that simply assigns points. Otherwise, it’s been fairly easy so far in terms of new knowledge, but mentally more challenging when working on the exercises—which I actually enjoyed, even though it took me about two hours to complete the last part of the chapter.