Free course on money and banking

[stone]

I signed up for this free course (starting next month) after seeing this recommendation on another forum. Has anyone else done this or have an opinion about it?

Starting in May, Coursera will be running (for the third year) an online course on Money and Banking, taught by Professor Perry Mehrling of Barnard College, Columbia University.  Mehrling is Director of Education Programs for INET, the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

https://www.coursera.org/course/money

If anyone is interested in money and banking and has a 2-4 hours a week to spend, I'd highly recommend it.  The course is in two parts, the first part covers payment systems and money markets, and the second covers foreign exchange and capital markets.  The format is 1-2 hours of video lectures each week, plus a short reading (typically a book chapter or similar, supplied as PDF).  The course avoids theory and abstraction, and examples are demonstrated entirely through balance sheet T-accounts.  While an interest in economics is a pre-requisite, there's no need to know any formal economics (some short equations make an appearance in part two of the course, but part one doesn't require anything in the way of maths knowledge either).  Mehrling regularly contrasts the banking systems of the late 19th century (Lombard St and the gold standard) and today to highlight similarities and differences, and while the contemporary focus is on the US Federal Reserve, I found having the historical focus on the Bank of England helped keep the course relevant from a UK perspective.  There is a course specific forum where any questions can be addressed, and numerous online teaching assistants able to help. 

All in all, I'd say this is the single best resource I've encountered in getting a good understanding of how money and banking work.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

http://www.coursetalk.com/providers/cou ... g-part-one

http://www.pragcap.com/perry-mehrlings- ... tem-course

[Lang]

Thanks a lot. I'm surprised the course is free.

[dualstow]

How do these courses work, anyway? Are you just watching a video, or do you actually have to interact by doing homework? If you don't do it, do they show up at your house and take away tv privileges?

Seriously, I would take the course just to learn and I imagine that's what you all are doing. Just out of curiosity, is there a test and if you pass is that something that can be put on a resume?

[stone]

Good to hear that PugChief thought it worthwhile.

This was some more feedback I got from that other forum (the Green Party England and Wales forum ):-

Submitted by stone on Mon, 06/04/2015 - 07:42
Thanks for the recommendation, I've signed up now
I'm puzzled though why they don't just have all of it online all the time, so that people can just do it as and when, rather than dosing it out over particular weeks.

Submitted by Dacre TrevorRoper on Mon, 06/04/2015 - 22:47
Hi Stone,

I think firstly Professor Mehrling tries to keep the course topical, picking an article from each week's Financial Times that references something about that week's course material, as a way to show the relevance of the lecture material.  Secondly, for those that choose to be active on the forum (which I'd recommend) there tends to be a lot of discussion around that week's course material.  The video lectures are interesting and do an excellent job at being accessible, but they are a genuine university level module taught at Columbia, so having a forum to raise questions, discuss the material and chat to online teaching assistants (and Mehrling himself) can really help much more than watching the videos in isolation.

[gizmo_rat]

On the subject of free courses,  I signed up for "Big Data: Measuring and Predicting Human Behaviour" at future learn which started a couple of days ago.

The first weeks material has been good, a couple of interviews, a couple of papers and some introductory exercises on google trends and wikipedia usage stats. I've found the material pretty engaging even though I've only a tangential interest. 

They estimate 4 hrs a week commitment for 9 weeks, I found the first weeks material only took 1.5 hrs in .5 hr chunks.
You can join the course at anytime.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/big-data