Review of offers of Coursera and edX

I continue a series of reviews of educational courses that Darkus started here and here . With his permission, I used the description format.

I'll tell you about the four courses I attended in the fall of 2012, on Coursera and edX . In fact, I took a little more courses, but something was in the framework of self-review of the archive of completed courses ( Computer Science 101 , Introduction to Databases ), and something was discontinued due to personal circumstances.
So, consider the following courses:

Coursera

1. Fundamentals of Programming
2. An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
3. Information Security and Risk Management in Context

edX

1. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

If you are interested in the courses offered, welcome.
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Course Description

The description includes a link to the course page, names of lecturers, university, start date and number of weeks, approximate scientific directions, volume of lectures per week, course complexity, language complexity, programming, subjective description, certificate and requirements for its receipt, assessment.

Unfortunately, unlike Darkus ' a, I did not keep the mind maps.

Let's start ...

Fundamentals of Programming

• Lecturer: Jennifer Campbell , Paul Gries
• University: University of Toronto
• Start: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 7
• Scientific directions: CS: Programming
• Volume of lectures per week: a block of 40-45 minutes
• Difficulty: 1-2
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: An introductory course on the basics of programming, covering topics such as data types and working with them, describing and calling variables, creating and calling functions, using methods, the order of program execution (using the built-in debugger in Python, as well as third-party online resources) , working with cycles and conditions, types of errors and causes. There are weekly homework assignments that check the understanding of the material, as well as several laboratory work - writing programs based on TK (the correctness of the code is checked by the script on the course page).
  In my opinion, a very good introductory course in the field of programming. I would even put it this way: if you are far from programming and do not know what it is and how, the course will help you to feel, even if remotely, what it means to be a programmer. The girlfriend was glowing with happiness when the clock was working (even if the clock interface itself was provided by the teachers) :)
  Honestly, for me the course did not open anything new - I took it only for the purpose of making a comparison with other courses, but to help a friend, in which case :)
• Certification procedure: To obtain a certificate, it was necessary to perform 7 weekly homework assignments (each for 5% of the final grade, 3 attempts per assignment — the questions did not change much), pass 3 laboratory works (each for 10-15%) and write a final exam (25%). You must score at least 70 points to get a certificate.
• Rating: 98.2%

An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python

• Lecturer: Joe Warren , Scott Rixner , John Greiner , Stephen Wong
• University: Rice University (Rice)
• Start: October 2012
• Number of weeks: 8
• Scientific directions: CS: Programming
• The volume of lectures per week: 2 blocks of 35-40 minutes
• Difficulty: 3
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: A more advanced course, although explanations of basic terms are still present. What is the plus of this course? It’s proposed that the acquired knowledge be immediately applied to the writing of interactive applications interacting with the user: it all starts with the simplest console game “Stone-Scissors-Paper” (extended “lizard” and “Spock”), and ends with “Asteroids” .
  The minus of the course is that the online GUI package is used, tailored to the course, so additional libraries will be required to recreate the game locally.
  The joy of a friend from the written programs can not be described :)
• Certification procedure: No certificate. To get a final grade, it was necessary to perform 14 weekly homework assignments (2 every week, 2-3% of the final grade, 5 attempts at a task — the questions didn't change much) and write 7 games (2 console and 5 graphic). All games were checked by fellow students on the written checklist.
• Score: 87.66% (did not pass the last game, although he wrote more than half)

Information Security and Risk Management in Context

• Lecturer: Barbara Endicott-Popovski
• University: University of Washington
• Start: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 10
• Scientific directions: Information technologies, Security
• The volume of lectures per week: a block of 1 - 1.5 hours
• Difficulty: 2
• Language: 4
• Programming: no
• Description: A good course that describes quite a few aspects in the field of information security in terms of risk management: laws (US), strategy, documentation, control planning, general description of technologies, disaster recovery plan, etc. Plus, there are lectures by invited experts at various levels and the use of NIST 'documentation as a teaching material.
  In my opinion, the course is suitable for those who want to work in the field of information security, but have not yet decided where, as well as for the heads of information security and higher in the hierarchy, to streamline knowledge. There is practically no technical part on the course.
• Certification procedure: No certificate. Optionally, it was possible to write a regulatory document on information security, but there was no desire, because, as part of the work, I was just doing this.
• Rating: 100%

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

• Lecturer: Eric Grimson , Chris Terman , John Guttag
• University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Start: September 2012
• Number of weeks: 14
• Scientific directions: CS: Programming
• The volume of lectures per week: 2 blocks of lectures (2 topics) for 1.5 - 2 hours
• Difficulty: 4-5
• Language: 5
• Programming: Python
• Description: Without a doubt, the most powerful course in programming. The first four weeks more than covered the aforementioned courses with Coursera, and then something breathtaking began: recursions, algorithms, classes, graphing, simulations, statistics, optimization, graphs, etc. The only negative: it was necessary to allocate about 8-10 hours a week.
• Certification procedure: It was necessary to pass all the classwork interwoven between lectures (16 works, 5% of the final grade for all works), laboratory works (9 pieces, 15% for all), examinations (one work after the first and second third course, 20% each job) and exam (40%). On the control and exam, writing the code was checked by scripts (up to 20 attempts, without outputting the result), one attempt was made on theoretical questions. Passing score is 55, although there is a gradation: C (55+), B (65+) and A (80+). What is the difference, I do not know yet - the certificate will come in a few days.
• Rating: 94%

I am happy to answer all your questions)

PS The complexity of the course from MIT can be estimated from the following picture of one of the students :)