Are there geology MOOCs anywhere? Every time I go looking I find at most like three but one’s in Chinese (which I don’t know nearly well enough to take a course in), one’s some advanced thing, and the other… I don’t even remember.

Anyway, is there anywhere I could possibly peek into a course like… Rocks an’ Whatnot 101 maybe? Dirt Stuff for People with Clean Hands, maybe? :'D I can’t promise I won’t end up disinterested or get bored or distracted and quit, but I want such courses to be a thing anyway.

  • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.socialOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is that a farting tomato? … Is that a farting rock?!? Thanks, I guess? 🤣

    I just find it annoying that I can take roughly six thousand courses on Python at the same time but couldn’t pay somebody (not that I would <.< ) to talk about dirt. Seems like a super obvious hole in the offerings of Coursera, edX… oh, maybe I should check MIT’s new thing.

    • TroyM
      1·
      1 year ago

      Admittedly, it’s much easier to teach python digitally, because the hands on portion happens on a computer. For a proper geology education, you will eventually need real samples in your hands, in instruments, etc. So while a first year Rocks 101 course is probably doable online, it gets harder as the material delves deeper.

      It’d be neat to offer an online course with a rocks and minerals package that gets shipped to the customer – say an assortment of common rocks, and the 30 most common minerals or something.

      Also, it’s not farting! It’s flying through the air really quickly! Like a thrown tomato. It’s so hard to do physical comedy with emojis these days ;)

      • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.socialOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not sure throwing a rock at me is better than having a rock fart at me 🤣At least I can still learn about the rock if it hasn’t knocked me unconscious :P

        • TroyM
          1·
          1 year ago

          Looks down at Riikka’s unconscious form. Oops.

          • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.socialOP
            1·
            1 year ago

            Is that the geologists’ greeting, you just throw rocks at people?! No wonder I can’t find any geology MOOCs: they’ve probably all been banned for being too violent :P

            Also it turns out MIT OCW does have a bunch of geology stuff! … Just it’s only like lecture notes, no videos or interactive stuff :-\ Bleeeeh it’s too exciting looking at all’ the topics, but then it’s all, “Hope you like reading a lot and don’t have focus problems!” 😅

            • TroyM
              1·
              1 year ago

              Well, what did you find? Post links if you can. One day someone is going to be googling for this exact question and you’ll have left them hanging. Kind of like this comic.

              • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.socialOP
                1·
                1 year ago

                evil laughter >:3 Sorry, I’ve been rendered unconscious by a hurled stone and can’t provide any links at the moment :P

                https://ocw.mit.edu/search/?t=Earth%20Science
                Here you go :P (Am assuming this is enough? Doesn’t really make sense to link all of the links provided through this link O.o ) MIT OCW has a ton of stuff but it’s very spotty with regard to what’s offered per course. Sometimes it’s just like, a syllabus and nothing else; others have what seems to be everything a paying student would get except office hours chatting face-to-face with the prof.