One of the goals of my retirement was to undertake some further study, mostly in robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Not for any constructive reason but just for fun. I didn't want to do anything too heavy or demanding as I wanted to be retired and just have fun so a full undergraduate degree was out of the question. I thought of doing some post-graduate study which seemed to be at about the right level for what I wanted, but I didn't fancy a complete Masters or similar. I also wanted to be able to walk to the University campus as my desire was to include the exercise into the process as another fun activity. I didn't mind paying some money but I didn't want to hand over a great load of my hard-earned retirement cash. Obviously this meant I would have to go to my local University, which just happens to be the University of Surrey in the UK. It is not too far away to walk to and they have an attractive campus University so that seemed ideal.
I looked at the post-graduate modules that they offered and there was one that seemed about right, Neural Networks and AI Programming. It wasn't exactly want I wanted but it seemed close enough. It was a bit pricy at £1100 for the module which is about the cost of a nice holiday in the sun, but I thought, why not. Additionally the module ran in the spring semester so I would still have the summer for working in the garden, being on holiday and generally lazing about in the sunshine. Unfortunately the University does not allow individual modules to be taken - I have no idea why not - it has to be a whole Programme. They do offer post-graduate certificates and diplomas so I thought I might be able to do my study as part of a part-time post-graduate certificate, with a January entry. Seems that these awards are only fall back awards if you do not successfully on the full Masters. Plus, they do not allow January intakes either, so basically I was stuck. I would have had to take a part-time masters starting in September, which would have meant studying two Modules before I got to the one I wanted. That all seemed too much trouble, too much effort, but mostly too much money.
I looked around for alternatives and at the moment I am working my way through the Essentials units on this Element14 website. These are OK but they are relatively simple, they are not about Artificial Intelligence much and they do not involve any walking to the campus. However, they have the major advantage of being free! As I wanted to do more I thought I would look into MOOCs. These are Massive Open access On-line Courses. There might be something that would take my fancy sufficiently. I am not a particular fan of computer based learning as it is difficult to achieve a good challenging level of intellectual stimulation. I did look for some AI MOOCs, and they do exist, however I was first attracted to some robot MOOCs. At the moment I am doing a Mobile Robotics MOOC from Open2Study, which is from an Australian University. This is a four week course running from November until December, with one module per week. I have done two modules so far. This is OK but it is fairly simplistic, it doesn't contain any mathematics and there is no practical activity - at the moment. There are tests but they are relatively trivial, not even as challenging as the Essential Quizs. It does seem to be providing a good overview of the entire field of robotics and I have learnt some things I didn't know, which has been good. It completes this week, so I am a bit behind and will have to put in a bit more effort to make sure I finish properly.
I have also signed up for a Robotics MOOC being provided by the University of Reading via Future Learn. This MOOC starts on 7th Jan'19 so if you are interested yourself you could look it up. The link to join is: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/begin-robotics/8.
This MOOC is also free but seems to have a practical element, using a simulator (provided as part of the MOOC) and possibly real components (which you have to provide yourself). If you want a certificate then you have to pay for that. My intention is that for future blogs I will report back on how the MOOC is going.
This is not quite what I wanted as it is not AI and does not involve a walk to the campus, but it is further study so I will count it as meeting one of the three of my objectives. If it turns out OK I might consider a more significant MOOC.
Dubbie
Top Comments