Anyone interested in some group study?

[Libby]

I've just signed up for an online course called "Understanding the Origins of Crime":

https://www.open2study.com/courses/understanding-the-origins-of-crime

It's a four-week course, with lectures via video. It's free. It starts on 18^th November, but they seem to repeat the courses quite frequently.

The Open2Study is a joint venture by several Australian universities into delivering courses to people who just want to know a bit more, or build on what they already know.

I've already done one, on Basic Physics, and I'm just finishing off a second, on Chemistry. In each, there are four modules, broken into ten topics. At the end of each of the first nine topics there was a pop quiz (with hints for an incorrect answer) followed by an assessment after each last topic.

If anyone is interested in joining that course, we could run our own discussions here. But, if not, there are other courses there for anyone who's looking for good, free, learning opportunities.

[Simon Black]

Sounds good but unfortunately, I have not enough spare time :-(

[Libby]

That's a pity, Simon, but I understand. I've found that one of the advantages of being retired is having time to follow my interests. And, there's no daily commute to work, which can take up a large slice of people's time.

But I can post my notes here for anyone who wants to scan through them for any points of interest.

[Raven Wolf]

I'm interested! Can you tell me a little bit about how challanging it is? Because, while this is something I will probably always want to learn more about, as you may remember, I get pretty easily overwhelmed. Thoughts?

[Libby]

I'm not sure how challenging this course would be, although I've no doubt some aspects will be upsetting. Of the two courses I've done so far, I'd say that the lectures certainly made me think, but the assessments were quite easy (they were all multiple-choice questions). I think that the aim of those courses was to get across the concepts involved, rather than testing whether students have rote-learned all the finer details.

But the most challenging thing I found was getting used to the slightly more formal aspect of doing a course (there is a timetable, but it's a flexible one), and not freezing up when doing the assessments. I kept reminding myself that I was doing the courses to learn more, all the people involved in providing the courses were doing that so people like me can learn more, and the final mark is just the icing on the cake.