Learning as an autodidact - What a MOOC is and two platforms to take MOOC's of many different topics for free

Before starting, I want to explain one of the reasons I'm here. I recently studied an English course in Canada, of course I learnt just the basics of the language. One of the activities they encouraged us doing to practice was writing short essays. I found the steemit community few days ago and I think this is an extraordinary project to share and discuss information freely. That is why I think It would be great if native English people can take a look and make corrections and comments, I think this could be a great tool to help us (English learners) to improve ourselves. Thanks! 

What is a MOOC

Maybe many of this post readers have heard about this education modality before, however, I think there are many new people who may never heard about how to take advance of what a MOOC is. This basic post is mainly for those people. If you know more about it please feedback in the comments. 

The word MOOC comes from Massive Open Online Course. The idea is exactly as the meaning, taking courses online taught by recognized institutions or particular teachers, sharing the knowledge with many people all over the world since there are unlimited availability (just like we are doing it here in steemit) and in many cases for free. If your intention is taking a course to add to your resume, you also can get a certificate or even a degree by paying a fee depending on the platform you are using.

Other advantage of a MOOC is that one can organize their own time to learn as well as the speed to do it. Age is not an obstacle, actually many people who takes this kind of courses are those who want to update their actual knowledge as well as those who are just curious about the topics. 

The topics are unlimited, going from programming in a variety of languages (which have been very successful), sciences and engineering until foreign languages, arts and so on. Taking into account the technologies we have and the limited time, this has resulted in a great advantage for many self-taught students.  By the way, that was one of the best dreams of Isaac Asimov and many others.               

Two platforms to take MOOC's of many different topics for free 

Right now there are a huge quantity of platforms to take MOOC's, however, I want to recommend two of them just because I have used them and they have worked excellent. 

Both of them offer certificates, specializations and masters degrees, going from weeks to 1 - 3 years of study. The main language is English (most of the courses are taught in this language) but you can also find courses in other languages like Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese between others. 

The first one is Coursera , founded by two Stanford Computer Science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. This platform has 161 partners (or institutions) across 29 countries and right now is offering 2,644 courses of many topics. I think this one has more courses in Spanish than Edx. 

To get more information visit https://about.coursera.org/

The second one is Edx , founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. This platform has more than 113 partners and more than 1700 courses. 

To get more information visit https://www.edx.org/about-us

My experience taking a MOOC

I have taken three courses, one in Coursera and two in Edx, and they have worked excellent for me. In both cases is mainly the same functioning. The student has in general the following sections in its account: the syllabus, the lessons (text or videos), the assessments or homework, the forum or chat for discussions and the progress in which appears all the assessments and the final mark. 

Screen printing of my Edx account.

The lessons can be from low to high difficulty, in many cases are the basics to introduce students to more complex topics. There are basically two types of courses, with a specified time of duration or on your time, depending what are you looking for (certification, specialty or degree). The assessments can be marked automatically (by their own or external platforms like DataCamp in case of programming courses) or by your classmates, in this case you will mark others classmates homework too. Questions in the forum can be answered by other students as well as assistant professors. Finally, if you aren't sure about paying for a certificate, it is possible to take a course without a certificate and pay for it later.  

I have learnt a lot using this platforms and I hope you do it too.    

All that is needed to take a course is to sign up with a personal mail address, a great attitude and that's all!   

Some information was taken from both platforms websites which links have been added.