Happy to see that they are doing so well. I was so excited when I joined (one of) their first class(es), A.I. At the time I was still a university student and had a hard time going to class, seeing how far technology was ahead of our teaching methods. Learning online is a much better method for me.
Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
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Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#22I wonder what is hidden behind the phrase "the college partnerships failed". I took some great courses on Udacity, Coursera, and edX back in the days when they regularly offered amazing comprehensive college courses for free. They do still offer free courses. However, it seems that the atmosphere of free accessible education is somehow lost, with the advent of the "specializations" and "nanodegrees" and the like. Or…
I feel it's a failed graft. MOOC cannot play nice enough with current education system without causing too much interferences, hence the no parternships.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#23I don't think technology will revolutionize education the way everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it will. Accessibility issues, yes. Disrupting traditional teaching, learning, practicing....hmmm?
Accessibility definitely, but I think it's naive to assume that just because the centralized teacher-student model of education has been around for a long time necessarily means it will never be supplanted.
I think the evolution of education is probably technology supporting traditional teaching, along with some way of easily varying the curriculum or the learning mode to accommodate different learning styles.
For that to happen I would guess that making designing curricula, lesson plans and activities easier to do would be a good start.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#24Happy to see that they are doing so well. I was so excited when I joined (one of) their first class(es), A.I. At the time I was still a university student and had a hard time going to class, seeing how far technology was ahead of our teaching methods. Learning online is a much better method for me.
So maybe it's not that learning online is a better method but that you found better teaching material and online is obviously a easier method to do so?
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel somewhat the same. I took a couple Udacity courses that were great and quite a few from Coursera. Coursera's free offerings are now partially gutted by restricting non-paying students from taking tests and submitting assignments.
I think the big mistake was offering something for free and then asking money for it. The first backlash was with the (unverified) certificates and the latest with the tests and assignments. It might have been a different story if they announced from the beginning that they are only offering their services for free for a certain period of time. They focused on gaining users and they succeeded on that, but now that th…
I think it's just basic human psychology that once you have access to something, you start feeling entitled to it. However, in reality, Coursera (or any other company) is under no obligation to keep providing free stuff.
It's natural that you are losing users once you start asking for money, it's just impossible to have it otherwise. Let's not forget that Coursera is a business so they obviously need to generate some revenue, sooner or later. What they did seems like a sensible business decision to me. They focused and succeeded with the marketing and branding initially (Coursera became almost synonymous with online courses) and they are collecting the revenue from it now.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue here is that going through a professional institution is the difference between being a 'self taught amateur' and a 'well studied professional'. Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur, your first media coverage is either going to say 'the Harvard graduate' or…
So does nothing exist for people to strive for between/beyond wanting to work at places that embody the banality of …Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. and Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur… , or such a between state like that just unimaginable?
Small businesses without an HR department.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#27> Thrun, who will remain as president and chairman of Udacity, said that he will continue to work full-time at Udacity, but he will take on a role focused on what he is passionate about—innovation. Just personal interpretation whenever someone says he or she is focusing on innovation without too much information: "I am not sure what I want to do, I am going to pretend I know what I want to do with the company's money…
Except that Thrun has a pretty good track record so far.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#28I don't think technology will revolutionize education the way everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it will. Accessibility issues, yes. Disrupting traditional teaching, learning, practicing....hmmm?
Agree, technology will (and already has to some extent) revolutionize learning on your own, but there still is a lot of value in going to a class, learning together with real people and listening to an experienced teacher. It is kind of similar as to why virtual meetings will never fully supplant real life meetings. Our mind just reacts differently in real conversations and i think peer pressure actually makes some sense in a learning environment.
It's similar to how i feel about working at home after years of doing it and now working in an office again. It's just a different feeling of commitment to a project.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#29I don't think technology will revolutionize education the way everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it will. Accessibility issues, yes. Disrupting traditional teaching, learning, practicing....hmmm?
But "accessibility issues" could completely change the way people learn. What if each student could access the kind of instruction one gets at Philips Exeter or Princeton University?
Or what if the tailored aspect of private instruction could be scaled up? For example, if you give a tough math problem to 1,000,000 students, and want to have a tutor walk them through the problem, you'd need to have 1,000,000 tutors. But there are probably only 20 types of mistake one can make on a given math problem. So if you had a "choose your own adventure" solution, one math teacher could, in a month, record lessons that reach a hundred million students at a personalized level.
Or, one could make a cost-effective way to learn from the absolute top practitioners in a field. Most people cannot afford private basketball lessons with an NBA basketball coach, for example. But let's say such a coach watched 10,000 people play basketball for five minutes each, and recorded five minutes of feedback for each person (about one year of full-time work). Then, you could upload a video of you playing, you could algorithmically analyze the user's playing style, and match them to the person in the set of 10,000 that matches them best. The five minutes of feedback might be really useful to that person, and can be delivered at scale.
Re: Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the big mistake was offering something for free and then asking money for it. The first backlash was with the (unverified) certificates and the latest with the tests and assignments. It might have been a different story if they announced from the beginning that they are only offering their services for free for a certain period of time. They focused on gaining users and they succeeded on that, but now that th…
I think it's just basic human psychology that once you have access to something, you start feeling entitled to it. However, in reality, Coursera (or any other company) is under no obligation to keep providing free stuff. It's natural that you are losing users once you start asking for money, it's just impossible to have it otherwise. Let's not forget that Coursera is a business so they obviously need to generate some…
Agree. They are running a business so can charge if/what they want. I just think they were a little clumsy how they made the transition. It was particularly annoying for people mid-way through a specialization to find out that the rest of the courses in the specialization would be crippled.