Journey of Learning

Davin Davies — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:01:41 +0000

I want to take you a journey of knowledge and learning, through the world of MOOCs. I guess we should start with what a MOOC is.

The acronym MOOC stands for 'Massively open online course'. In essence, these are college/university level courses, that are accessible to anyone online. Generally created by Universities such as Standford, Open university and large organisations like Microsoft and AWS.

Now we know what they are, let's get into what I discovered in my journey.

I start doing MOOCs 8 years ago with a course called "Learning how to learn" on a MOOC platform called Coursera. The course was short 12 hours long. Before I started I thought "12 hours, this cant is that in-depth" OH my was I wrong. The content was not only engaging but also very informative.

That was it I was bitten by the learning bug. Over the following years and still today, I find a course to do when I have a little spare time. At the time of writing this, I have completed 138 of these courses.

That's right 138 courses nearly 2000 hours of voluntary learning. Covering a wide variety of topics from religions, Plantalogy, Mental health, Lots of techs related and even attempted to learn how to speak Chinese.

I imagine by now you are wondering Why? Why would I do this? Surely you can't remember it all……

So here is why

Your right and wrong! I don't recall everything from this course, just like most people don't recall what they had for breakfast 3 days ago. While this might sound like I wasted my time in doing these courses, it wasn't a waste at all. What I gained in appreciation of other perceptive outweighs the finer details

Out of these courses, with everyone I completed, I gained a broader perspective of the world we live in and the people in it.

I don't proclaim to be an expert on any of it. Still, I feel all of these courses have made me appreciate the world from the perspective of other people and cultures. It also taught me to appreciate the work of others, as every one's work is as important as the next.

My take away from it all, is that a little time spent here and there learning can help you have a more balanced understanding and perspective on many different topics.

What does the future hold for my learning ….

I will be continuing to do courses when I have the time. However, I will be mixing it up a little with other forms of more informal learning.
Including Live streaming where you can with the material provider of the content (shameless plug for myself – Copperbeardy on Twitch) directly and get quick feedback.
The other is through gamification of learning, particularly in the coding area with such products as Scratch, Blocky and my favourite TwilioQuest.

One final point!
you can do Moocs for free on most platforms below but you won't get a certificate, but you get access to the same material.

Short Course providers

Subsciption short course providers

Sometimes the way is not easy, but that makes it more worth it.

Davin Davies — Sun, 28 Jul 2019 21:11:24 +0000

For my first post, I thought I would share a look at my last few years on my road to becoming a developer, partly to let you know me a bit
better.

At 41 this is now my 8th year in academic study for CS degrees. The first degree I started 7 years ago with The Open University
it was a great university, that was a good match for me not only because it gave me great support but it allowed me to study at a pace that was manageable with my anxiety and depression.

I won't lie to you, doing a degree is not easy, but what would be the point if it was.

There were many times when I felt like I could not do it and just wanted to quit. But I pushed through with great support from the university and family and in December 2016, I graduated with a BSc(Hons)Comp & IT with a grade of 2:1. As you can imagine I was ecstatic and so proud of myself.

I took a year out...... well sort of did. I get a bit restless and was well and truly bit by the learning bug.

Whilst I was doing my undergraduate degree I was in my spare time doing online courses. But it this gap year I went into overdrive did quite a number of an online course in everything from philosophy to asp.net core identity. I still do these course around my next degree and to date have completed over 146 of them. Also, during this time I create a Xamarin. forms app and put it on the AppStore completely ad-free and cost-free. As proof to myself, I can do it.

A year on after completing the undergraduate degree I decided to take the plunge again and went on to start my MSc Computer Science at Univeristy of Hertfordshire. I am still currently doing this degree, I have recently started my capstone project for the MSC, which is investigating and demonstrating the accuracy and usability of Azure maps services for developing location-aware systems. I should be completing this degree in mids 2020.

I feel that all this study. which ok it might be a bit overboard, has given me a better appreciation for other aspects of the development of software and the roles of other people and the demands on them as well. It has also help me better focus and deal with my mental health problems.

During my studies, I have found some useful resources and have put them up on Github page.

Unfortunately, despite all of this study I am still not working but my circumstances are difficult with my anxiety still keeping in the house.
Regardless though I will continue to study to learn new things and sure I will eventually find a way to put my skills to use.

What should you take away from this?