Learn Web 3.0 with Waves on Coursera
Inal Kardanov discusses how the course came about, who can benefit from it, and what students will learn.
‘Mastering Web 3.0 with Waves,’ created with support from the Waves Association, is now available on the global educational platform Coursera.
The course combines all the information and skills you will need to build decentralized apps based on the Waves protocol. Before telling you about the course, I’d like to recap how far we’ve come from the beginnings of the idea to its final arrival on Coursera.
How it all started
The idea for a course of this kind first occurred to me more than two years ago, in the process of discussing educational activities for developers aimed at popularizing blockchain technology (specifically, the Waves platform).
We wanted to release the course immediately on a well-known platform with a large number of potential students and began looking for a partner university that could help. Unfortunately, our efforts in Russia didn’t lead anywhere and the idea was temporarily shelved.
We revived it just over a year ago when discussing educational programs for developers with Alexei Pupyshev. He suggested first releasing a course on a smaller platform named Stepik, rather than immediately aiming for Coursera. That would allow us to polish the content of the course, collect feedback, and figure out who the course most appealed to and how to improve it for them.
With a little help from us, Alexei created a course on Stepik, which proved to be successful. Developers were interested to learn new technologies by creating a project with practical applications, while we received feedback and looked at ways to optimize the course.
Few know that the Stepik course was originally supposed to have both text and video, and Alexei even recorded the first video. Alas, the quality of the video wasn’t professional enough, and we decided to stick with a basic text version.
The second attempt at Coursera began last summer when we restarted our search for a partner and eventually partnered up with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). This institution already offers many popular and well-respected courses in English.
Based on MIPT’s suggestions and feedback received from students of the Stepik course, we improved the course, recorded videos (I hope you’ll appreciate the quality!), updated our presentations, added extra materials and revised other elements for the final project. If you’ve already taken the Stepik course, its content is likely to look familiar, but I still suggest you check it out on Coursera as well to refresh your knowledge!
The recording of videos and preparation of materials turned out to be just the first step in launching the course, and almost six months eventually elapsed between finishing the materials and releasing the course. This time was needed to take care of various legal matters. Initially, we couldn’t even imagine that releasing a course on Coursera would be such a huge and complex task. Thanks go to our colleagues at MIPT for all their help!
Who is the course for?
The course is primarily intended for those who already have a developer experience, but who may not have been involved in creating apps using blockchain. Potential students include web developers (front-end, back-end), mobile developers, as well as analysts, and product managers.
Our task is not just educating students in blockchain technology but also encouraging them to create their own startups that could become ‘the next big thing’. This is one of the reasons why we discuss various blockchain application cases, showing examples, and going beyond merely the technical aspects of this field.
The course is free, and the certificate price is set at the lowest possible level (unfortunately, Coursera certificates are never free). Upon successfully passing the course, you’ll be able to collect not only a Coursera certificate but also a digital certificate on the Waves blockchain from one of the ecosystem’s projects!
How is the course organized?
The course starts every four weeks, and you can join at any point. The course is composed of six weekly modules that cover all essential aspects of Web 3.0 app development, such as blockchain basics, tools, the Ride programming language, and specifics of Waves smart contracts.
Upon completion of each module, students will take a test and undertake part of the final project. Upon completion of the entire course, students submit the final project, which includes implementing smart contracts, linking them to a user interface, and uploading to GitHub.
The course will take you between two and three hours a week. You can, therefore, complete the entire course in 18 hours (I wonder if anyone will be able to do that in less than a day…).
Code-writing assignments will be graded by people rather than algorithms so that students can receive detailed replies and practical advice. Coursera and GitHub tools will be used for that, but I also suggest you also join the Waves developer chat: https://t.me/waves_ride_dapps_dev
You can learn more about the course and enroll here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/mastering-web3-waves
Additional thanks
While I’m the only one who features in the videos, many people worked on the course and I’m very grateful to them. First of all, there’s Sasha Ivanov, who gave the course the green light. Apart from him, I’d like to thank Alexei Pupyshev, Vladimir Zhuravlev, Matvey Voytov, Valentin Plotko, Olga Kosareva, Vitaly Fedosov, Vladimir Kozlov, Tatyana Lyubarskaya, Gleb Sychev, Dmitry Panteleyev, Maria Borovikova, Oleg Chinarev, and Lilia Baimuratova, as well as all our colleagues from MIPT. It turns out you need a lot of people to launch a course on Coursera!
I look forward to welcoming you on Coursera! I’ll grade your assignments, answer your questions, and provide feedback. Enjoy the course!
