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102 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
# Frequently Asked Questions
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This page answers some questions that we frequently receive about the curriculum.
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If you have questions that aren't answered here, try asking through one of our [community channels](README.md#community).
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If it seems important enough or we get asked that question a lot, we will probably add it here.
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Alternatively, you could [contribute](#CONTRIBUTING.md) an answer yourself.
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## Contents
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- [Are Coursera courses free to access?](#are-coursera-courses-free-to-access)
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- [Does every resource in the main curriculum have to be free?](#does-every-resource-in-the-main-curriculum-have-to-be-free)
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- [In what order should I take the courses?](#in-what-order-should-i-take-the-courses)
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- [Is it necessary to purchase the Verified Upgrade for edX courses?](#is-it-necessary-to-purchase-the-verified-upgrade-for-edx-courses)
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- [Why do you recommend skipping the second half of CS50?](#why-do-you-recommend-skipping-the-second-half-of-cs50)
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- [Why doesn't the curriculum cover/ignore topic X?](#why-doesnt-the-curriculum-coverignore-topic-x)
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- [Why is the curriculum missing some pre-requisites?](#why-is-the-curriculum-missing-some-pre-requisites)
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## Questions
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### Are Coursera courses free to access?
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Some courses that require payment to access probably do exist on Coursera, but we don't put those on our curriculum.
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All Coursera courses that we put on the curriculum must, at minimum, be **free to audit**.
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For some courses, all course features are available for free;
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for others (especially those that are part of a specialization), you may only be able to access the lecture videos.
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(If you find the policies have changed for any courses on our curriculum, please tell us!)
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Unfortunately, for some courses, Coursera's interface is [very aggressive](https://darkpatterns.org/) about convincing you that you have to pay.
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You may see something like this on the course page:
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<img src="http://i.imgur.com/MxOcYZv.png" alt="Free Trial" style="width: 400px;"/>
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When attempting to enroll in such a course:
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- Click the blue "Enroll" or "Enroll Now" button.
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- A pop-up will appear.
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- **Do not click** "Start Free Trial", unless you do want to pay.
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- Find the text that says "Audit this course" at the bottom.
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- Click **Audit**.
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### Does every resource in the main curriculum have to be free?
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Yes, because we have to draw a line.
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As soon as we require paid resources in the main curriculum, we might as well tell people to pay half a million dollars to attend a university.
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We are an Internet-based community of learners, not a business, so free is the most sensible price and ensures that the only price you need pay is the price of Internet access.
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At the same time, we recognize that education is scarce resource and therefore requires payment to instructors to make it sustainable in the long term.
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Therefore, we respect the business model of websites like edX, which make their materials free but with some paid add-ons, like official certificates or extra interaction with course instructors.
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So we only require that the *learning materials* of a resource be free to access, not that every possible add-on be free.
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It would be ideal if graded assignments were always free but if we had this requirement, we would have to exclude any resource that doesn't have graded assignments at all.
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Plus, there are other ways to get feedback on your work, and OSSU is a do-it-yourself education.
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### In what order should I take the courses?
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You have a few different options:
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- You can progress linearly from top to bottom of the page.
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- You can progress linearly through each individual section, but studying different sections in parallel.
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- You can design your own custom progression using the pre-requisites to guide you.
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We have designed the curriculum to work for any of the above three styles.
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### Is it necessary to purchase the Verified Upgrade for edX courses?
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If you just want to watch the videos, it is never necessary for any edX course on our curriculum.
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CS50 doesn't use edX's grading system; it grades all assignments for free.
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The [Software Development](https://www.edx.org/micromasters/software-development) courses have mostly free quizzes and assignments, but their Final Projects will only be graded by a human if you pay.
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### Why do you recommend skipping the second half of CS50?
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The strongest and most useful part of CS50 is the part where they teach C.
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We wish to retain this in the curriculum for now because it is one of the few chances the student has to play with manual memory management in a (relatively) low-level language.
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Everything after that gets a bit too easy and shallow, to the point that we believe the student's time will be better spent in MIT's Introduction to Computer Science course.
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That being said, feel free to finish CS50 if you like it and want to.
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But don't skip the MIT Intro course.
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### Why doesn't the curriculum cover/ignore topic X?
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We have several goals that we have to balance:
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- Ensure students learn the timeless principles of computer science in the best possible way, pedagogically speaking.
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- Ensure students are given sufficient knowledge of today's systems to be employable in the near future.
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- Ensure students are exposed to enough cutting-edge knowledge that they won't be left behind when technology changes, which it always does.
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- Keep the curriculum brief enough that it can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
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Therefore, not everything can be included, but we strive to be eclectic so that students are both employable and well-armed for change.
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### Why is the curriculum missing some pre-requisites?
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The curriculum assumes two things:
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- You are reasonably fluent in English.
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- You have gotten through a standard high school curriculum that included physics and pre-calculus.
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Without these assumptions, the curriculum would be out of control with trying to fill in your knowledge gaps.
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But those who for whatever reason didn't get all the way through high school math and physics are in luck: you can find the content you need on [Khan Academy](https://www.khanacademy.org/).
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Of course, if you find that the curriculum is missing a pre-requisite for a course that isn't part of a normal high school curriculum, please let us know! |