I’ve blogged recently about how intellectually invigorating it is to take university courses from HarvardX and other leading universities online. (Here, here and here.)
Well, tonight I downloaded my first official certificate of completion, which is posted nearby. If you click on the image, you can see it comes with its own verification URL — a really nice touch to prove its authenticity.
Despite students’ personal pledge not to cheat in ER22x — a pledge common and core to EdX courses — lots of them must have done so. One of the Google searches driving the most traffic to my site until the course ended was “er22x quiz answers.” My blog post about scoring 100% on an ER22x quiz is one of the first links Google returns. When visitors who are presumably looking for answers discover I was just bragging a little, they bounce immediately. It’s been a sad confirmation of the essential baseness of many that people taking a course about doing the right thing could care less about their own pledges and integrity. To get the certificate, you had to complete the quizzes and exams. And for some, this certificate was worth cheating on the quizzes and exams. That’s something I just don’t get.
And while I didn’t exactly ace the course (the final was a bitch), I did do well enough to pass the course legitimately. I know the certificate is devalued by the cheaters; still I am nonetheless pleased I achieved this. And, Michael Sandel is a freakin’ rock star professor — so it was fun.
My fall schedule at EdX is almost as full as my freshman daughter’s!
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