Coursera Writing Classes Starting Soon

[beachnut]

I wanted to share these Coursera writing classes that are starting soon, since they both look amazing! You can read details here.

 

English Composition I: Achieving Expertise

 

Denise Comer (Duke University)

 

You will gain a foundation for college-level writing valuable for nearly any field. Students will learn how to read carefully, write effective arguments, understand the writing process, engage with others' ideas, cite accurately, and craft powerful prose. We will create a workshop environment.

 

Writing II: Rhetorical Composing

 

Susan Delagrange, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, and Cynthia Selfe (Ohio State University)

 

Writing II engages you in a series of interactive reading, research, and composing activities along with assignments designed to help you become a more effective consumer and producer of alphabetic, visual and multimodal texts.

[8filltheheart]

I was really interested in the first course for my 11 th grader until I started reading the materials. Am I being hyper critical when reading this page in the open textbook on writing makes me wonder about the writing abilities of the author??? http://writingcommons.org/process/play-the-believing-game

 

The errors make me crazy. ( and in reading subsequent pages, the errors continue. :( )

 

Has anyone taken this course? Do the materials improve? I might have him take the course and do it with him in order to critique its value as an option for us.

[G5052]

I signed up for the second course. I need professional development credit, and starts close to the end of my teaching gigs.

[regentrude]

So how is the writing evaluated? I would find any writing course of limited use unless the instructor can give feedback on the student's assignments. I have, however, a hard time imagining how this would work in a free, online course with a large enrollment - the professor can not possibly read and critique every student's assignments.

 

Could anybody who took a Coursera writing class shed a light on the feedback? I am definitely not interested in a mere peer editing setup, that's the one-eyed leading the blind.

[flyingiguana]

I did look at the syllabus for this writing course:

https://class.coursera.org/sciwrite-2012-001/lecture/index

Looks like it might be a lot of "tips", but that's probably not what most students need.

 

The truth is, I'm having trouble finding any Coursera course that even comes up to the level of the Teaching Company.

 

So far, I've tried

History of the World since 1300

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Cryptography

Introduction to Astronomy

Algorithms

Probabilistic Graphical Models

and some course on Economics for Scientists

 

They weren't all bad in the same way. Some were way too easy. Some just didn't cover anything useful. Some didn't seem able to explain anything at all. I understood what they were trying to say, because I knew the material, but my daughter didn't get it (and I can totally understand why).

 

Are there any courses that anyone has found that really seem to have some meat to them, with a professor who can explain what I don't already know?

 

I'm now trying Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering. It looks like it might have potential, but I'm withholding my opinion until I get more through a few more lectures.

 

I think we may also have tried the Python programming course but went with the Udacity one instead because it made more sense.

[G5052]

So how is the writing evaluated? I would find any writing course of limited use unless the instructor can give feedback on the student's assignments. I have, however, a hard time imagining how this would work in a free, online course with a large enrollment - the professor can not possibly read and critique every student's assignments.

 

Could anybody who took a Coursera writing class shed a light on the feedback? I am definitely not interested in a mere peer editing setup, that's the one-eyed leading the blind.

 

Yes, I'm not expecting much. I took a course last summer in "Writing Instructions for Learning" from a state institution, and it was mostly peer-graded using a system similar to the one they are going to use. And it was not that useful IMHO. Only a few actually did the peer grading, and I most of what I got was not very insightful. Definitely the one-eyed leading the blind. I got my credit though, and I ended up doing some paid work on contract later for that professor, so it was worthwhile.

 

But here it is January, and I need a professional development credit done by June 30th. I really don't have time to take anything demanding right now. For my own children, I'd definitely want something with more meat.