Keeping the Mind Fresh

I’ve always tried to do at least one course or qualification each year which is nothing to do with “the day job”. This is partly for relaxation, but also because doing radically different things forces you to think differently Lastly, it reminds me what it is like to have to start from scratch again, acquiring knowledge and skills. It keeps the brain fresh.

For example, I went to night school and studied British Sign Language for 4 years (after starting out with just a one year introduction course!). I followed that with a course on welding – slightly different. After that, I started Pilates classes (I’ve broken too many bones to go back to rugby again).

The Biggest Ever Class Intake?

So, I was looking around at what to try next when I came across a tweet about an online degree-level module in Artificial Intelligence that Stanford University were offering – it had something like 25,000 students from around the world signed up. It’s now at over 85,000, I believe.

What a great idea! Bringing that level of expertise to a vast audience.

I’d encourage you to find out more, not just to see if the course is of interest (think “Google is actually artificial intelligence…”), but also to look at how the course is structured, how the content is “chunked up”, how it will be assessed, and how a global population spread across time-zones is accommodated.

Beyond the course content itself, there has clearly been a lot of learning and thinking going on. Stuff we can potentially learn from to, for our customers, our staff and our businesses.

Wish me luck as I brush up on my stats theory in preparation for the course!