All in all, Eric Lander's 7.00x (Introduction to Biology) probably was the best of all the courses I completed in 2013. Lander is a fantastic lecturer -- it wasn't uncommon that his lectures (or shall I say performances) ended in applause.<p>Going beyond "just" videos and multiple-choice quizzes, the MITx folks built/assembled an impressive array of mostly web-based tools (e.g. a 3D molecule viewer, a molecule editor, a simplified version of genome viewers used by actual biologists) to support the learning enterprise.<p>Here's a glowing review that (unlike my scribblings here) starts to do the 7.00x experience justice: <a href="http://okazakifragments.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/the-best-mooc-ever-just-ended/comment-page-1/" rel="nofollow">http://okazakifragments.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/the-best-mo...</a>
I really enjoyed Programming Languages by Dan Grossman (U. Washington) on Coursera. Well organised course, smoothly run. <a href="https://class.coursera.org/proglang-002" rel="nofollow">https://class.coursera.org/proglang-002</a>
Machine Learning. I thought it was a really tough class and took more time than they say (they say workload: 5-7 hours/week -- maybe if you are perfect and your code never has bugs that you need to spend time debugging -- the course is based on programming assignments in Octave where you have to demonstrate mastery of machine learning concepts), but I put in a lot of extra time, mastered everything, finished with a 100. Andrew Ng is a top-notch teacher, even though his speaking style is very low-key. <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/ml" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/course/ml</a>
I finally made time for "Functional Programming in Scala" and it was fun.<p>However, I must add that when I tried to use Scala in the real-world, it was considerably more complicated due to implicits, CanBuildFrom, and other "invisible hands" (not merely synactic sugar, mind you).
Learning Creative Learning: <a href="http://learn.media.mit.edu" rel="nofollow">http://learn.media.mit.edu</a> (for as long as they keep the site up anyway)<p>Introduced me to some new ideas about learning, and solidified some ambiguous thoughts I already had. Much fun.