We list all the courses from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as: Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc. We also list courses from providers such as the OpenCourseWare consortium, Saylor, and many others.
We list courses that are generally college level. A course must be put on by a university or professor or a recognized authority on the subject. We don’t list short youtube videos or things like that
We use the CourseBuffet Classification System to classify every course. This means we assign a subject and level to every course similar to what is done at many leading universities. Courses that cover the same or similar material will have the same CourseBuffet subject and number. This enables you to know which courses are directly comparable.
The first part is an abbreviation of the subject the second is the number that indicates the level. Together they make up a unique identifier for the courses assigned the number.
CourseBuffet title is the generic title for the courses assigned a certain CB subject and number classification. The title indicates what is generally covered in the courses grouped under it. This is useful as courses covering mostly the same course material may have different titles.
The CourseBuffet number that is roughly equivalent to classification a course would have at an American university. In the US system a course is assigned a number based on the level of the course. Freshman level (1st yr) courses are 100, sophomore (2nd yr) is 200, junior(3rd yr) is 300, senior (4th yr) is 400. Graduate level is 500. Pre college course are 99 or below. An example of how this system works: Introduction to microeconomics we call Econ 101 as it is generally a 1st year (or 2nd year) course. Intermediate microeconomics we might call it Econ 301 as it is generally a 3rd year course. Courses assigned a “0” have no judgment of level. These are generally Medicine or Public Health courses that may not fit in to regular classification.
As mentioned above it will be roughly equivalent. The reason why there is not an exact match is US universities don’t share a standard classification system. While there is no universal standard most universities have similar standards and the subject and level assigned a course generally are similar and the order they are taught is similar. A 1st year course at one university will most likely be a 1st year course at another university even if the number it is assigned is not exactly the same.
It might but not always. Generally a course that has a higher number is more advanced than a course with a lower number. This is not always a case. Sometimes a course may not be more difficult than a previous course but will cover material that is generally learned later at a university. For example at US universities students learn about the American political system before other systems.
