Online courses at edX.org
There is a new opportunity for you to take MOOC courses independently at https://www.edx.org/. This site offers a large variety of courses that you can take to complement your studies on Systems Analysis and Operations Research. You may find interesting courses e.g. under the categories Data Analytics as well as Business and Management. The instructors are typically very good and the course contents are up-to-date and relevant for today's challenges in business and other areas of the society.
Taking these courses requires your own initiative and you are responsible for making a plan on completing the course and about how you verify that you have learned the material.
The basic requirements for taking MOOC courses independently are: The course should be relevant to your studies, the course should not overlap strongly with other courses you have taken or plan to take, there should be a possibility for you to verify that you have taken the course. Verification requires at least that you show the course completion record at the edx.org website. Additional means of verification may be required by the supervising professor. You are not required to purchase certificates from edx.org.
General procedure for earning credits by taking a MOOC course independently
-Find a course and ensure that you would have time to complete it within the time limits set by edX. Note that there are paced and self-paced courses offered.
-Make a plan on your schedule to complete the course. Consider if you could complete some additional activities other than the assignments at the MOOC website. The professor giving you credits may require some of these. See instructions below.
-Contact a professor or a teacher who is an expert in the area covered by the course. Agree on a deadline for completing the course. In case you have difficulties in finding a professor, contact tuomas.j.lahtinen@aalto.fi.
-Once you have finished, show he professor that you have completed the course.
Possibilities for additional activities.
These may be required by the teacher at Systems Analysis Laboratory. These activities serve two purposes. They improve your learning and help us to verify that you have completed the course by yourself.
-Study diary. E.g. keeping a weekly diary on your progress.
-Essay or a short summary on the course topics.
-Organizing a study circle related to the topic. This option can be taken by a group of students who want to take the same course. You can organize weekly meetings where the course material is discussed. Each week one student should be assinged to the role of discussion facilitator. This student would be responsible for planning the discussion topics in advance and leading the discussion at the meeting..
Example 1: Explore Statistics with R (Karolinska Institutet)
The course is self paced. It includes:
-Video lectures
-Reading material
-Practice tasks: Doing yourself with R, completing multiple choice questions as you proceed
-Graded tasks: Doing yourself with R and responding to multiple choice questions. Also, responding to multiple choice questions based on the course material
How to get credits at SAL:
-Ensure that this course does not overlap significantly with other courses. This is the case, for example, if R is not extensively covered in other courses that you will take.
-Contact a professor.
-Complete the course at edX. Write 2 page summary of what you learned and how is this knowledge useful to you.
-Show course record at edX.org to the professor and hand in the two page summary.
Workload estimate: 8 hours of work for 5 weeks + 2 page summary of the course = approximately 50 hours = 2 credits.
Example 2: Supply Chain Design (MITx)
Learn how to design and optimize the physical, financial, and information flows of a supply chain to enhance business performance.
The course includes video lectures, reading material, practice tasks and gradaed tasks. You will learn concepts related to supply chains and build supply chain models using spreadsheet software.
How to get credits at SAL:
-Ensure that this course does not overlap significantly with other courses.
-Contact a professor.
-Complete the course at edX. Write 2 page summary of what you learned and how is this knowledge useful to you.
-Show course record at edX.org to the professor and hand in the two page summary.
Workload estimate: 8 hours of work for 12 weeks + 2 page summary = approximately 100 hours = 4 credits.