Harvard Science and Cooking Online Course

Hello Chefsteps!

It's a bit late to throw this out there, but the Harvard Extension School is offering an online-accessible version of the (in)famous Harvard Science and Cooking Course. As part of the teaching staff, I feel compelled to post about it here in case anyone is interested - or if anyone has any general questions about what the course entails. One of the perks is that we will provide reserved seating at the Public Monday Night Lecture Series for any students involved who live in the Cambridge/Boston area.

This is a sort of transition away from the EdX platform we used last year (which we found worked for some, but was generally unwieldy), so hopefully this will be a bit more refined. Ideally there will be more opportunities to take this class in the future, but your enrollment now will definitely help maintain that potential. We've got some AMAZING guest speakers this year (Dave Arnold, Mark Ladner, Christina Tosi, and Nathan Myhrvold, to name a few), so please check out the course if you're interested and give me lots of feedback so that we can keep improving things moving forward!

You have until September 9th to enroll for this semester, but I'd definitely love to chat with you guys about things you'd like to see from the course. Us scientists don't always know the best approaches toward introducing material, so hearing from the chef end of things is ALWAYS helpful.

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Comments

dave

Thanks Tim...I took the EdX version last year and learned a lot. Thanks for your efforts.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Is this the same course that was provided through the EdX site before?

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Tim is Harvard going to release the public lecture videos as per years past for 2014?

As a chef, who has watched all the public lectures (2011 and 2012 - if 2013 was ever released you guys make it impossible to find), does MOOCs for fun, and started the SPU27x last year, for me the public lectures are the most informative. I will leave aside my long rant on the ill-designed, user unfriendly user interface of edX, but the information relevant for me in SPU27x, I found after a tedious clickfest only to discover it was a clip from the 2011/2012 public lectures, and/or a rehash of a speech/lecture/discussion given that I had seen before via YouTube/TV programme.

Whilst I have the means, time, prerequisites and interest to do the course, I will not. For the price of the nonrefundable Extension School registration fee, I can do at least two of the paid short courses on Chef Steps. These courses are far more relevant to me in the kitchen and also give me the why it works without having to think about grams/mole, mole/Litre, atomic mass units, and the distance between molecules in nanometres.

This course that Harvard runs has great relevance and I hope it encourages scientists to work in the food industry. As it is currently structured and at the price point you are charging for tuition, I doubt if you will see many working cooks/chefs sign up.

Tim_Roth_78505

Essentially, yes. There are some minor changes (different platform, sections with a teaching assistant, etc.), but if you've gone through the EdX course, you've gone through this one.

Tim_Roth_78505

Short version: probably not.

Long version: I don't know off-hand if the public lectures will be uploaded to youtube as standalone videos. The current course actually uses separately recorded clips of the guest chefs and lecturers that were made specifically for the online versions of the course. My understanding is that the videos for the course at this point are only made available to those enrolled, although I don't actually have any experience from that end of things and haven't looked into it much myself. To me, the benefit comes mostly from the practice problems and the final projects (and guidance you get through them), but as with all things your mileage may vary.

As for the tuition complaints, that's totally understandable. I'm not necessarily expecting anyone to jump up and enroll, but I at least wanted to publicize a little given that this will be our first time teaching through the extension school. Ideally there will be a more significant rehaul of material by this time next year, but that sort of thing is beyond the scope of my involvement at the moment.

Tim_Roth_78505

Glad to hear it! Thanks for being patient with us as we move toward online education. It's always great to hear that people learned a lot in spite of many technical issues.

tshewman

Hi Tim, I am having difficulty getting info through Harvard website (tried FF and chrome). Is there a direct link for registration for the course? It appears to get hung up when I click on registration then Harvard server takes too long (that's the error I receive).

Tim_Roth_78505

Hmm... odd, I'm not having any issues at the moment. It could be that there's a lot of traffic during this registration period. I'd try again later to see if it works then. I'll see if I can find a registration link in the meantime, though.

douglas_bd

Tim Roth, Thanks for posting the details. I've really enjoyed the past lecture series and have taken inspiration for many of my own kitchen experiments from the public lectures. I started with the EdX course, but didn't follow through mostly due to other time commitments during the period it was offered. I'd hoped to pick it up again in a later session and was excited to see your post that it was starting up again.

Unfortunately, while $1250 for a 4 credit class seems very reasonable (I'd even say a great value) for a degree candidate, it is well above what I'm willing to pay as someone who has interest in the content, but no need for credit.

Has any thought been given to an audit option? Perhaps a nominal fee (or even free!?!) for access to lectures, but no direct faculty and staff interaction. Read only access to materials perhaps? I can imagine that a large base of freeloaders (like myself) could easily drain resources on your end and weeding them out may be beneficial to the 'real' students, not to mention your own time and sanity. Is there enough benefit derived by the University or the participating chefs that a more casual/economical offering of a portion of the content might be offered or maintained for future classes? I hope so, though I'd certainly understand if it's not.

Tim_Roth_78505

This was definitely the plan through the EdX platform, but this current iteration is geared toward degree candidates and thus isn't freely available yet. That said, I'd be surprised if we didn't have plans to make material publicly available in the future - and I'll definitely be sure to let the instructors and administration know that there's interest!

Tim_Roth_78505

Oh, I also pimped ChefSteps a bit in my introduction to the course, so hopefully I'll be able to get some of my students involved here. If you have any suggestions for the best ways to entice them further, please let me know!

Chris_Young_80640

Tim: Thank you. If there is anything ChefSteps can do to support the course, please let us know.