Another free course: Model Thinking

http://www.modelthinker-class.org/

by corey • 15 years ago

106 22 15 years ago

modelthinker-class.org

corey• 15 years ago

The instructor is actually from University of Michigan, so it appears that this phenomenon is spreading.

callahad• 15 years ago

Similarly, SAAS Class is taught by instructors from UC Berkeley.

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Clearly, this is a plot to prevent me from getting anything done.

pault4• 15 years ago

I just spent several hours today digging through Poor Charlie's Almanack trying to build a more complete understanding of his mental models. You always hear references to them, but I have yet to find a list of them in one place. Not unlike the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices. What great timing.

jroid• 15 years ago

Here you go... http://thinkmentalmodels.com/page67/page67.html

pault4• 15 years ago

Yeah, that keeps popping up, but the summaries on the rest of the site seem to be of poor quality, and it felt a bit scammy. $3 isn't much, but I don't want to support these "scrape together a bunch of blog posts and sell it as an ebook" types. I'll just wait for the class.

melling• 15 years ago

Time for a HN spreadsheet for all the classes?

dhawalhs• 15 years ago

I built this over the Thanksgiving weekend to keep a track of all the classes: http://www.class-central.com/

pault4• 15 years ago

That's really nice, I think it deserves its own submission.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

Nice! Will definitely come in handy :).

Don't forget to add Model Thinking to the list!

anatoly• 15 years ago

A nit: the start date field, in an amusingly non-intuitive way it took me a few seconds to figure out, sorts alphabetically by the month's name rather than by the date.

Nice list, thanks for putting that together!

donald_draper• 15 years ago

For the future, it would be really cool if those courses would feature one preview lecture and a schedule to decide if one wants to get into it or not - now that it's getting so broad.

Tichy• 15 years ago

I just sign up for all of them and decide which ones I'll keep watching once they start.

itmag3• 15 years ago

What are some more... unconventional classes HNers would be interested in taking?

Internet marketing?

Better thinking? Something like this: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3285535

Optimizing communications with the opposite sex if male?

Language hacking? Aka learning languages faster/smarter.

Study hacking? Ie optimizing college, or autodidactic pursuits.

Give me some tips on stuff you would like to learn via an online class.

tryitnow• 15 years ago

I'd like a class on how to pick which online classes I should take.

Actually, I'm only partially joking. I am guessing that there's just going to be an explosion of these opportunities in a couple of years. I believe in lifelong learning, but this is ridiculous, there's only so many hours in the day.

A class dedicated to teaching people how to plot their own course through all of the educational opportunities that are becoming available would actually be quite valuable.

For example, which courses you take and in which sequence is hard to figure out. Some inputs might be your learning style, your existing knowledge base, your IQ, your available time, whether you're a thinker or a doer, etc, etc.

itmag3• 15 years ago

Yeah, that's a decent idea actually.

May I post it here? http://ideashower.posterous.com

officemonkey2• 15 years ago

Sounds like you need a course on goal-setting.

I'm all for making an informed decision, but sometimes you just have to go on a whim based on an "I always wanted to take a class like that."

Case in point: Years ago, I was a technical bureaucrat and it was the first job where I had a little extra money. I took a jazz-singing class, primarily because it was close to the office and I liked jazz but didn't know how to play an instrument. I learned how to perform comfortably in front of an audience (if you can scat, you can certainly do a 30-min work presentation.) Best of all, I met my wife in the class.

Two years later I was married and giving presentations/teaching for a living. Not much more money, but much happier.

saurabh• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking

steveeq1• 15 years ago

Scott Page who is the guy who is giving this class wrote an excellent book called "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies": http://tinyurl.com/cbv2pm9

Certain types of mental models are covered in the book, but not in a concentrated way. The book was also highly recommend in one of Nassim Taleb's books (I think it was "The Black Swan").

Another free course: Model Thinking

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