I Wish I Knew About These Free MIT Courses When I Started My Undergraduate Degree

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You went to your university the first day.

On the first day, the teacher gave an introduction to the courses you must take.

You found the introduction so boring that you started thinking about dropping out of college.

On the very first day, you discovered that teachers have no interest in teaching this course. The teachers had little energy left in their bodies. They made no effort to make the course exciting and interesting.

I hated taking those courses at my university. I wanted to have a different teacher to make the course interesting or a different environment to learn something.

I came across these free MIT courses when I was about to finish my degree.

These courses make learning fun and interesting.

1. Introduction to Psychology

If you can understand how your mind and body work together.

You will get unique information on why humans behave in a certain way in difficult situations. These unique insights will guide you when making new decisions.

With proper knowledge of psychology, you can easily defeat any type of mental illness.

Brief Introduction About the Teacher

The teacher who teaches this course is named John Gabrieli. He is a neuroscientist at MIT.

According to his Wikipedia page, he is an expert on the brain mechanism of human cognition, including memory, thinking, and emotions.

His work includes neuroimaging studies in healthy adults and children, as well as in clinical patients with different brain disorders. These disorders include schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and dyslexia.

This course has no prerequisites. You only need high school knowledge in math and science.

For reading purposes, you need a book called Introduction to Psychology: Brain, Person, Group written by Kosslyn, Stephen M, and Robin S. Rosenberg.

How Can You Benefit From This Course?

According to the course overview mentioned on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. This course is designed to introduce anyone to the scientific study of human nature.

If you are going to compare this course with other psychology courses. This course focuses more on neuroscience and scientific ways to better understand the human mind.

The main topics that will be covered in this course include emotional learning, perception, child development, social interaction, and personality.

2. Principles of Microeconomics

Economics plays an important role in our day to day life.

If you can learn economics well. You can make a financial decision wisely. Not at the individual level but also at the regional and national level.

You will increase your problem-solving skills and analytical skills after going through this course.

Brief Introduction About the Teacher

Jonathan Gruber teaches this course. He is a professor of economics at MIT.

According to his Wikipedia, he has been teaching at MIT since 1992. He is the director of a health care program. He is an associate researcher at the National Office for Economic Research.

Jonathan Gruber has been a key architect of Massachusetts health care reform. He has a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

He served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration. At that time he helped draft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

To take this course it is necessary to know the basic concepts of calculus. You need to have knowledge of single variable calculus.

For any type of reading you will need the book by Perloff, Jeffrey M. called Microeconomics.

How Can You Benefit From This Course?

Once you have completed the course. You will develop a variety of skills to understand economic concepts.

According to the MIT OpenCourseWare website for when the course is over. You will be able to understand consumer behaviour, firm behaviour.

You will be able to understand and analyze different types of market structures. You will understand how to apply economic principles to a variety of policy issues.

Not just these things. After completing the course, you will be able to mathematically and graphically solve the company’s cost minimization problem.

3. Blockchain and Money

Blockchain is the hottest technology right now.

There are many courses that are available for blockchain on different websites. But learning from an MIT course with an interesting group of students is great.

If you are going to compare any course with the MIT Standard. I can tell you that no course can be taught in a fun and interesting way.

Brief Introduction About the Teacher

The teacher who teaches this course is named Gary Gensler. He is a former investment banker. He has spent eighteen years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

He now is the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Gary was the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under the leadership of President Obama.

Gensler was the chief financial officer for Henry Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. His teaching style is excellent throughout the course. He interacts with the students and keeps them engaged in the conversation.

There are no prerequisites for this course. To read, you can refer to the books ‘Digital Gold’, ‘The book of Satoshi’, ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and several others.

How Can You Benefit From This Course?

If you want to explore the underlying technology behind bitcoin. If you want to change the world of money and finance.

This course can serve your purpose of understanding blockchain technology in-depth and can help you change the world of money.

All readings are provided on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. Before any new video from the course, complete all required readings. Once you’ve been through reading, video lectures get a lot more interesting.

This course starts with the whole history of money and then slowly works its way to bitcoin. The professor discusses the technical challenges that bitcoin must face.

This class also discusses the application of blockchain in financial products that are about to go on the market.

4. How to Speak

Whether you are giving a job interview, speaking to an important client, your communication skills are important. It can decide your present and future.

Therefore, learning to speak can improve your quality of life. You will learn to maintain good interpersonal relationships once you learn to speak.

This course teaches you to speak in difficult life situations.

Brief Introduction About the Teacher

Patrick Henry Winston teaches this course. Patrick was a professor at MIT for almost 50 years.

Winston was a computer scientist and director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997. He was known within the MIT community for his excellent teaching skills and for his commitment to supporting the culture of MIT college students.

Winston has taught this course on how to speak for over 40 years. This course was offered every January for MIT students.

How Can You Benefit From This Course?

The professor teaching this course is widely known for teaching courses on artificial intelligence and human intelligence enterprise.

This course is a 64-minute video course. After taking this course, you will improve your ability to speak in critical situations.

Winston teaches you some heuristic rules. This course is one of the most popular courses at MIT Campus. In this course, you will be presented with a collection of rules.

Winston will give you the rules along with examples of how to apply them. These examples include talks at job interviews, thesis defences, and other oral exams.

“By the end of the next 60 minutes you will have been exposed to a lot of ideas, some of which you will incorporate into your own repertoire, and they will ensure that you get the maximum opportunity to have your ideas valued and accepted by the people you speak with.”

— Patrick Winston

5. Cryptocurrency design and Engineering

With each passing day, hundreds of new cryptocurrencies are launched on the market.

Gen Z is deeply interested in the crypto space. The cryptocurrency companies are receiving a large number of funds from investors.

Learning how to design a new cryptocurrency can be a great skill for the future. This course helps you learn about the design and engineering of new cryptocurrencies.

Information About This Course

This course is being taught by two instructors. One of them is Neha Narula and another is Tadge Dryja.

For this course, you must have a good understanding of programming concepts. If you are just getting started with programming, you should try to do the course once you have a solid understanding of the basics.

This course is not a beginner’s course. Even if you have a great command of programming, you will also find it difficult to understand some concepts.

How Can You Benefit From This Course?

This course teaches you how to design cryptocurrencies similar to bitcoin.

According to the MIT OpenCourseWare website, you will learn how these cryptocurrencies work. This course will also teach you about cryptography, game theory, and network architecture.

Smart contract development is also covered in this course. This course has a total of twenty-four video lectures.

If you are someone deeply interested in cryptocurrency design, this course can open many doors for you.