Yes, I enjoyed the Pattison songwriting class as well. At first his applying the "strong" and "weak" concepts to every aspect of a song lyric seems overly simplistic, but it actually starts to make sense. I came into class with considerably previous experience in writing poetry, but thought I learned a lot from him and my peers. His breaking down a performance coaching example was also very instructive.
Other music MOOCs I enjoyed:
The Berklee "Developing your Musicianship" series on Coursera taught by George W. Russell. Started off thinking this was too elementary, but the ear training is valuable, and I learned a lot about the use of diatonic chords, and even the few simple patterns he taught improved my song writing enormously.
The Berklee "Jazz Improvisation" class taught by Gary Burton. Very cool to be taught by a living legend, and his selection of songs was refreshingly modern. On the down side, skill levels of the students varied widely, so peer review was more miss than hit.
> The Berklee "Jazz Improvisation" class taught by Gary Burton. [...] On the down side, skill levels of the students varied widely, so peer review was more miss than hit.
100% miss for me. The main thing I learned from that course is that a "MOOC" relying on peer review for feedback is a colossal waste of time, and should have stayed as a video lecture series.
True, I did not learn much from the feedback. On the other hand, the existence of peer review might have pressured me into putting more effort into my exercises.
Other music MOOCs I enjoyed:
The Berklee "Developing your Musicianship" series on Coursera taught by George W. Russell. Started off thinking this was too elementary, but the ear training is valuable, and I learned a lot about the use of diatonic chords, and even the few simple patterns he taught improved my song writing enormously.
The Berklee "Jazz Improvisation" class taught by Gary Burton. Very cool to be taught by a living legend, and his selection of songs was refreshingly modern. On the down side, skill levels of the students varied widely, so peer review was more miss than hit.