Udacity - start learning the finer points of science on your tablet

Online courses have already become a great alternative to modern education. Now, thanks to the Internet, you can, without leaving your monitor, learn from the lectures of such prominent universities as Harvard or Stanford. The palm in this niche is held by Apple with its iTunes U application, the number of downloads from which at the beginning of 2013 exceeded 1 billion. Every year it has many competitors, some of which, like Coursera, for example, have already been able to achieve comparable level of popularity.

The relatively young service Udacity, a project that was born within the walls of Stanford University with the aim of democratizing education, has been successfully attracting students from all over the world for two years now. And more recently, I presented my application for the iOS platform, which turned out to be very, very convenient.

The first thing you notice after the first launch of the program is its first-class style. Everything looks minimalist and stylish, in the spirit of iOS 7. No overloaded interfaces and unnecessary design delights. All transitions between controls or educational lectures are accompanied by pleasant animations, and all the few elements are exactly where you expect to see them. The design of the app is definitely worthy of praise.

The application greets you with a beautiful list of all courses

Each lecture looks like this

Authors are clickable and contain a short biography

Before you start studying a course, you will be prompted to register inside Udacity. This happens quickly and is no different from the standard procedure. Sign up, confirm your account, and go! Without exception, all courses are free, have a description and a teaser, and are divided into several lessons. Each lesson, in turn, consists of another 10-15 thematic videos. At the end of each of them, the program will notify you how close you are to the completion of a particular lesson. What's especially nice is that you're not tied to the internet. Going on the road? Just download some tutorials and don't waste your time.

Without registration here - nowhere

Each lesson consists of many small videos

On the left you will find a list of all lectures

What immediately catches your eye is the technical focus of the service. 3D modeling, computer science, web development: if you are more interested in the humanities, this is definitely not the place for you. But what is not yet encouraging - Udacity is noticeably inferior to its competitors in terms of the number of online courses. All that you will find there so far is 5 courses in web development, 9 in computer science and statistics, and 23 more on various topics, one way or another related to the exact sciences.

Minimalism can be traced here in everything.

With each video you are getting closer and closer to the end of the lesson

Few application settings

All lectures are read in English, which will be another reason to improve your level. The creators focus on professionalism, maximum information content, as well as student feedback. Each lesson is accompanied by homework assignments and tests to check how well you have learned the material. Upon completion, your work will be rewarded with certificates signed by the teachers.

Total

Udacity will interest you if you are into the exact sciences. Courses on programming languages, cryptography, robotics, physics will not leave you indifferent. The application turned out to be convenient and beautiful. The service is developing, and the lack of a variety of educational material will definitely not be a long-term problem. Well, we gather our will into a fist, download the application, and begin to improve.

What do you think about online education? Do you already use any of these services?

+ Nice, user-friendly application

+ Free lectures

+ Offline training

+ Interactivity

- Narrow profile

- Lack of variety of educational material