The Center for Open Online Courses Mathesis was founded in 2015 as a special department of the University Publications of Crete (UPC) with the sole purpose of creating and offering free of charge to students, professional scientists and the general public, online courses at the level of the best international standards. That is, the level of the UPC's publishing program is also at the level of the traditional printed book.
A special feature of online courses is that their quality is not only a matter of content and the teaching ability of their creator. It also depends crucially on the technological level of the platform that manages them. In fact, the platform itself — itself a product of a fruitful (and ongoing) interaction between content creators and IT technicians — constitutes a “toolbox” of educational techniques and applications that are beyond the capabilities of any individual online course provider to develop.
The new Fall courses that have just started include:
Introduction to Quantum Physics 2: The Basic Applications (Review)
This is the second part of the course Introduction to Quantum Physics 1, which further develops the basic ideas of quantum theory, but mainly applies them to the atomic and molecular microcosm with the aim of a fundamental understanding of the structure and properties of its basic components.
Specifically, the two main objectives of the course are the quantum explanation of the periodic table of elements and chemical bonding, as well as the conductive behavior of materials and laser light.
Instructor: Stefanos Trachanas, FORTH-University of Crete
Start: November 13, 2017
Introduction to Python (Review)
Would you like to be able to write a simple program in Python —the most popular of the "new" programming languages— that allows you (among many other things) to extract interesting data from the "ocean" of the internet? This course is designed to provide this skill to the citizen who is interested in acquiring it.
The course does not require any prior programming knowledge or experience, as Python is considered perhaps the most suitable language for a first contact with programming. The course covers basic data structures and programming structures, includes a number of examples and exercises that are solved step-by-step, while focusing on problems of retrieving and processing information from the internet.
The student who completes this course will be able to program in the Python language and solve interesting practical problems, such as retrieving information from websites and creating simple games.
Instructor: Nikos Avouris, University of Patras
Start: November 13, 2017
