I noticed just today an article in nhk news easy that talks about this new service of online university lessons.
It seems perfect to learn something new or as well to tell if your knowledge of the japanese language is enough to go there and follow real university lessons.

でも... I haven't tried it yet, so I can't tell if it's possible for gaijins to apply or if the quality of the lessons is good.

I'll register soon but とりあえず
Have any of you tried?　What do you think about it?

It looks pretty cool but, as it is university level, it's all technically quite above JLPT N1 level as far as learners of Japanese are concerned.

The lessons are mostly being run by people from well-known universities so I imagine the quality is quite good.

If you just want to poke around you can check out a few of the course descriptions and watch short videos with the free registration. That will give you something of an idea of what kind of language will be used. You can also apply from any country that can access the site so there's no "Japanese Only" clause or anything. However, at least at the moment, they're only offering one course at a time so the choices are limited.

Even if you're not quite on a level where you can effectively participate, I'm sure you can just opt to not take any of the tests and not write any reports- just like you could in a regular school. Only this time, since it's free, there are no consequences. Probably.

For other people's reference, I think this is the article:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k1001373...61000.html

I signed up for the site then registered for the Middle Ages history course. As with most MOOCs there is a pay course, but there is also a free course as well. If you choose the free one, as I did then there is no real drawback to signing up. As far as the content goes, I'm slightly below an N2 level. I can recognize pretty much all of the n2 grammar and understand maybe a quarter of the N1 grammar, but my vocab is pretty low at something like 4 or 5 thousand words, add on to that that I have only the most cursory knowledge of Japanese history so this class is significantly above my level. That being said, I can follow along with most of the lectures (first three down), and can under stand the gist of what he is saying. (Personally, I found it to be easier to follow than a good deal of TV.) I understand enough of it so that so far with the one in lecture quiz, I was able to get the right answer without guessing.

So, I would say that between and N2 and an N3 should be able to do it, but it will take some work. Obviously, someone who is at a higher level will obviously get more out of it.

On study related note, they have the videos for download in mp4 format, and an xml subtitle file available for download as well. I'm thinking that these short videos(6-9 minutes or so) would make good subs2srs material.

I just signed up to the history one too. I have to admit I have the strong feeling that I'm biting off way more than I can chew, but I think it will be good learning experience regardless of how well I do. I haven't watched any of the lectures yet but my knowledge of all history (not just Japanese) is almost completely lacking so I'm expecting to have to do a lot of extra homework.

P.s. Not hard to find, but actual gacco site is http://gacco.org/

Edit: Just watched the intro lecture. It turns out they have crowd sourced J-subs which makes things a lot easier.They're not 100% accurate but they do seem pretty good.

Looks like they'll be starting a lot of courses this summer, so those that aren't interested in history or think that something closer to a field they're already familiar with will be better study material for Japanese, you might want to check out what they'll be offering.

I'm going to sign up for this as well; I've been meaning to learn some Japanese history anyway.
And I agree that the videos will make good subs2srs material.

Where did you find out about future courses? I can only see the currently available ones.

[Zgarbas]

This is pretty awesome

Signed up for the History class

Finally got some free time and started watching. I went to a Japanese university many moons ago so this is kind of nostalgic. I miss university. (´・ω・｀)

This just adds more fuel to my fiery desire to get back to academia. (´・ω・｀)(´・ω・｀)

I can't make any comment on difficulty (other than well, yeah, he's talking like a college professor) but I can say that he speaks rather clearly so that's probably a plus? The subtitles on the site are also almost 100% spot on. For the first few videos, anyway.

一気に今週のやつ全部見てしまいそうヽ(´ー｀)ノ

The most important thing I've learned so far-- people in Japan's middle ages wiped their bums with popsicle sticks.

Splatted Wrote:Where did you find out about future courses? I can only see the currently available ones.

In the link provided earlier to the main site, there are a bunch of panels that describe course offerings; the panels contain the course name, an related image, a university name (I'm assuming where it was conceived or where the material came from), the instructors' names, and the opening date or season (on a bar on the lower part of the image).

Except for the the Japanese Middle Ages course, all dates are in the future and most of them happen to be in summer (or just flat out say 'summer'), some won't be out until the fall, such as the 'business school primer' course and the social sciences course.

Thanks Sholum.

Splatted Wrote:Thanks Sholum.

No problem.

After signing up and looking at everything, I'm in agreement that the Japanese isn't too difficult. Most of the vocabulary seems to be in Core 2/6k (or is otherwise common enough that I've seen it before), and most of the grammar, so far, is in Tae Kim's Guide.
Obviously, one will do much better if they've practiced listening, but the subtitles are very helpful.
The lecturer is really clear with sentences in speech and construction, so he should be fairly easy to understand.
For this course, they actually mentioned a highschool version when I was registering for it and they had an optional question during registration asking how much schooling has been completed, which included grammar school and middle school as options; from this, I'm assuming that most of the courses will be written to be accessible by a large range of educational backgrounds and ages, though I expect that will vary greatly by subject.

I noticed some of the future programs have English titles and/or foreign instructor names; either these courses will be bilingual or the company wants to broaden its target demographic to include English speaking foreigners or more advanced English students. (Or they're in Japanese and they just wanted to throw in some English, but I kind of doubt that, given how it's presented.)

I'm looking forward to the future of this site.

sholum Wrote:Most of the vocabulary seems to be in Core 2/6k (or is otherwise common enough that I've seen it before), and most of the grammar, so far, is in Tae Kim's Guide.

These are very good news.
I'm not too fond of history but I think I'm going to try the course anyway, so I'll be ready when more interesting lessons (for me) will be available this summer.

Splatted Wrote:For other people's reference, I think this is the article:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k1001373...61000.html

A little off topic, I'm just starting to read nhk every so often because my level is too low to understand most of the articles but with the help of Rikaisama for a good amount of words, I think I understood most of that article.

I only really have trouble understanding 1 part which is this:

１回に約１０分の授業を１週間に１０回ぐらい受けて

From what I can barely understand, it says: Receive a 1 time about 10 minute class once a week about 10 times?

Doesn't make much sense to me so can someone break it down for me?

(1回に約10分)の授業を(1週間に10回ぐらい)受けて

One lesson is ~10 minutes; ~10 lessons a week.

I see, thanks.

The topics from this online open course ware looks really interesting!

I've checked out some other open course ware from Japanese universities and they didn't interest me.

I think I'll give this a try. I would like my Japanese to improve to a college level.

this is awesome!!
j-subs!! wtf this is so great...

The course about the Internet has started today.

I must admit that I'm not so fond of history so I didn't follow the first course entirely, but the first few lessons were boring (to me).

This one is completely different:
- Easy to understand
- Funny (to a nerd like me)
- Useful on the CV (hopefully)

I recommend it

RandomQuotes Wrote:On study related note, they have the videos for download in mp4 format, and an xml subtitle file available for download as well. I'm thinking that these short videos(6-9 minutes or so) would make good subs2srs material.

That's what I did, though I used Google2SRT to turn the xml file into an srt also, handy for mobile viewing.

I wonder if there is a way to access the older course videos? I noticed I can't get seem to get into the history course - but I bet the videos are still somewhere on youtube with captions (xml file). Slightly harder to download but not by much

KanjiMood Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:On study related note, they have the videos for download in mp4 format, and an xml subtitle file available for download as well. I'm thinking that these short videos(6-9 minutes or so) would make good subs2srs material.

That's what I did, though I used Google2SRT to turn the xml file into an srt also, handy for mobile viewing.

I wonder if there is a way to access the older course videos? I noticed I can't get seem to get into the history course - but I bet the videos are still somewhere on youtube with captions (xml file). Slightly harder to download but not by much

The YouTube videos are probably private, but I wouldn't doubt it if they got shared or officially reopened eventually.

I have noticed that classes you are already enrolled in don't disappear, so if you don't have time to actually do the course, but are interested in it, you should grab it while it's available.
I don't know if they'll ever remove people from closed courses or if they'll ever delete course materials from the site (I doubt it), but for now, it works fine. Which is good, since I never actually finished the history class...

I wish the subtitle files would be properly named when you download them; I download in batches, so I hate having to rename files just to download them.

Apparently, if you drop a class, you CAN NOT reenroll in it, so if you plan on downloading the videos and deleting a class you don't finish, make sure you do it in that order.

So I'm following this course about the Internet and I'd try the 'exam' of the first week.
My japanese is still too bad maybe but I had got the impression of knowing what I listened so I'll give it a try.

Just to have some advice, have someone tried it yet? Is it difficult?

I also started the internet course. Really only taking it casually since my Japanese is so bad that the time/effort needed to really understand everything doesn't seem worth it yet. That said, i got about half of the questions on the first quiz so I'm clearly getting some of it.