In January 2013, Udacity and San José State University teamed up to deliver three SJSU courses on the Udacity MOOC platform: “developmental” (i.e. remedial) math, college algebra, and statistics. It didn't work so well. Not really surprising. Teaching math with multiple choice questions, no textbooks, and no study sessions. To students who are struggling with the subject matter. “We stacked the deck against ourselves,” SJSU provost Junn said.
But there was a fourth course that did much better: CS046—Introduction to Java Programming. Pass rates where higher than the on-campus course, and student performance was much higher, most likely due to the extensive programming practice.
The course was developed by myself, Cheng-Han Lee and Sara Tansey of Udacity, and Kathleen O'Brien from SJSU. I designed the course to be suitable for both SJSU students and for students and teachers in the AP CS course. Several hundred thousand students have registered for it.
Udacity is no longer offering the course, but you can access all materials through the links below.
If you want assign this material to your students so that you can check on their progress, use CodeCheck Assignments. Click on the Clone button for each lesson or problem set. Give the assignment URL to your students, or put it into your learning management system as an LTI link.