Susan Kistler on an Amazing, Free, Lifelong Learning Opportunity

I am Susan Kistler, the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director and aea365’s Saturday contributor. Although it cleared 80 degrees today, Labor Day is nearly upon us and with it the return to school. This means the return of 30 teenage boys to the dorm in which we have lived for the past 10 years, high school classes for my oldest, homeschool for my younger daughter while she slogs through junior high, and teaching science classes for my husband. And for me? I’m looking at the many courses offered for free through Coursera. Given AEA’s schedule, I’ll need to wait until winter, but I wanted you to know about the opportunities available starting this fall.

Rad Resource: Coursera promises “the World’s Best Courses, Online, for Free.” Taught by faculty from top universities, Coursera courses use cutting edge technology employing both automatic grading and peer assessment and feedback. I’m excited because Coursera incorporates opportunities for demonstration of skills mastery within a platform set up to serve tens of thousands of students. It represents one step in the democratization of education, increasing access for students who otherwise may not have the money or time to enroll in a traditional course. I can’t wait to see if it delivers on the promise of free quality educational opportunities.

Hot Tip: Here are just a few of the courses of possible interest to evaluation professionals:

• Statistics One with Andrew Conway of Princeton University (begins September 3, runs for 6 weeks)
• Organizational Analysis with Daniel McFarland of Stanford University (begins September 24, runs for 10 weeks)
• Computing for Data Analysis with Roger Peng of Johns Hopkins (begins September 24 for 4 weeks)

The last of these covers the basics of programming in R and using R for data analysis. Those of you who subscribe to AEA’s listserv, EVALTALK (it’s open-access, please feel free to click through and subscribe), have likely heard frequent talk of R from its many advocates.

Coursera has over 50 courses in their queue and more on the way. If you take one (or have taken one already) post to the comments and share your thoughts on the experience.

The above represents my own opinion and not necessarily that of the American Evaluation Association. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.