Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO

Post by ghaff » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

robbiemitchell wrote: post #57

skywhopper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that great courses require great faculty to create and manage them semester by semester. Udacity and the like are built on the premise that we can scale up a professor's reach by orders of magnitude. But you can't do that without losing quality. The state of online course software is such that in most cases it's a hindrance, rather than a help. Software should make our jobs easier, but for profess…

The assumption that classes should be taught on a semester ("seat time") basis, with everyone starting and stopping at the same time, is a professor-centric view of the world. A student-centric view would use technology to help students have an educational experience around their own schedule and needs (e.g., varied pace; reinforcement or skipping where appropriate).

Post by HillaryBriss » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41

gedrap wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> The marginal cost of producing another copy of digitally encoded product is essentially zero, and it requires zero specialist knowledge. Copying binary data is what computers are made for, it's their basic function. Plus, the Internet lets you scale a digital business to the whole world for (almost) free. Honestly, what feels entitled is expecting that one should be able to scale their business by orders of magni…

> If we apply this to the physical products, you can equally say that the companies shouldn't charge more than it costs to produce something. But if all companies worked this way, that would take us back to the stone age pretty quickly. But that's what happens in the physical world in face of competition (and that's the "great promise of capitalism", btw.) - prices fall down to minimal sustainable level unless someon…

Post by robbiemitchell » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #61

robbiemitchell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption that classes should be taught on a semester ("seat time") basis, with everyone starting and stopping at the same time, is a professor-centric view of the world. A student-centric view would use technology to help students have an educational experience around their own schedule and needs (e.g., varied pace; reinforcement or skipping where appropriate).

It's a structured learning view of the world rather than professor- or student-centric. The issue is that, if you take away all structure, you also tend to take away most real-time interactions (which admittedly are a serious weakness of MOOCs anyway) and you end up with an experience that's not much different from reading a book and/or watching online video talks/lectures/documentaries/etc. or, indeed, just doing so…

Post by Gargoyle » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

deepnet wrote: post #6

Professor Thrun changed my life, I and many tens of thousands around the world graduated from his classes, gaining an education that would have been impossible for many of us. I am forever in his debt for his tireless work as an educator and his work on SLAM & Self Driving Cars. Being taught by practitioners at the cutting edge of research like Thrun, Norvig, Ng, & Hinton is the education I dreamed of. I hope that Ud…

Post by nkozyra » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

CardenB wrote: post #54

nkozyra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the addressee but it's spectacular all around. There are a few classes that have a reputation for being poorly designed/maintained and a few with somewhat "unreasonable" time requirements (ie 50 hours a week for a single class). There are classes where you only interact with TAs/students (which is fine) and some where the professor is seemingly on a 24-hour modafinil drip, there to answer any question posed at an…

"There are a few classes that have a reputation for being poorly designed/maintained and a few with somewhat "unreasonable" time requirements (ie 50 hours a week for a single class)." As a current Georgia Tech student, I welcome you.