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Surprising Things About School

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Re: Surprising Things About School

#81

Post by watwut »

randomdata wrote: post #71
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants? For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than sitting in on a live class during the…

Classes for this crowd (older non-traditional students) tend to be in the evening or during weekend. Because they have jobs, education is not something they do while they are unemployed with intention to drop it the moment they find jobs. Through, major reason why they drop out is that handling work, family and school and harder, more demotivating and more tiresome then handling just school.

Beyond broadening access, if you have to be somewhere in person you have to make it priority at that time - and you are not interrupted while you are there. In home study is very easily interrupted and easy to postpone due to other very real duties until it is too late.

The motivation hit from meeting other students is also missing.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#83

Post by BrandonM »

akvadrako wrote: post #56
bartedinburgh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small fish in a big pond? I've heard a completely opposite advice stating that "in a big pond" there's much competition, and dominating a small niche yields better results. What is the rationale behind being a small fish in a big pond?

I can't see how either choice could be always correct. A small pond can have great rewards, but also great risk. Like if it dries up totally.

I take away something different from both of you. To me, the question is about whether it's better to be the most impressive person in a shithole town or a nobody in an amazing place. I'm not even sure I know the answer for myself, and it probably varies a lot based on personality.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#84

Post by RobertRoberts »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #15

"17. People rely mainly on their parents for advice on what to do about education, and that has to be among the worst places to go for educational advice" This one certainly hits me hard. With a mother who dropped out of university and a father who didn't go myself and my sister both have good degrees (she's a newly qualified Vet and I'm a startup's birth and death out of uni), and nowhere to get decent advice. I kno…

When I started looking for answers on what to do, even when I found good ones, it wasn't always easy to do what they said. And I know I failed at this a few times. Just having the right advice isn't always enough, you need to be able to do something with it, often times that's what parents help with too.

Edit: my advice to my kids, get and stay educated (don't care how, college is one way), work hard and treat people decently. Don't need much more than that to succeed.

Edit: Dave Chappelle said in an interview that his dad warned him not to go to hollywood, "you might not make it." Dave said "..that depends on what making it is, dad." And summed up by saying that if he could "make a teachers salary as a comedian", he's made it. That's just awesome.

Worth watching this bit here: https://youtu.be/SyZsxCyoARM?t=1268

NOTE: He convinces his dad to support him going into comedy. It's brilliant. "I was the first person in the family 'not' to go to college, that had not been a slave." - Dave Chappelle

Re: Surprising Things About School

#85

Post by austenallred »

randomdata wrote: post #71
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants? For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than sitting in on a live class during the…

The "mini code bootcamp" doesn't prepare people for jobs, it is a "miniature" version of code bootcamps. It actually only prepares you to begin our full computer science academy, which is six months long.

If you want the stats for our full computer science academy I can give you those; they're good. 50% hired within one month, median $90k salary.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#86

Post by randomdata »

austenallred wrote: post #85
randomdata wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants? For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than sitting in on a live class during the…

The "mini code bootcamp" doesn't prepare people for jobs, it is a "miniature" version of code bootcamps. It actually only prepares you to begin our full computer science academy, which is six months long. If you want the stats for our full computer science academy I can give you those; they're good. 50% hired within one month, median $90k salary.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm still most interested in the results of the 'failures'. What did the people who failed to compete the MOOCs end up doing? How about those who succeeded with the mini live classes, but did not continue into your full program?

Re: Surprising Things About School

#87

Post by [deleted] »

faitswulff wrote: post #37
austenallred wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was the reverse. Parents that grew up poor and saw college as the way out but didn’t understand dynamics beyond that, so it was, “Go to the best (most expensive) college you can, study anything at all, and you’ve got it made” which is either OK advice or terrible advice depending on what college that is and what you happen to study.

I got similar advice from my parents and followed it, somewhat bitterly. My dad regrets dropping out of college, but he also paid $400/semester for tuition, not $20,000 like I did. I feel like "any degree == $$$" was much more true in the 70s and 80s than it was when I graduated.

[deleted]

Re: Surprising Things About School

#88

Post by kbutler »

gliese1337 wrote: post #62
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

As long which ones you send to each link is determined entirely randomly, you have indeed done a "scientific" (i.e., statistically valid) control.

That's one element.

This first couple of things I'd check would be:

  - Double-blind: What if you tell students it is live, but it is actually pre-recorded? 
  - Are the live+archive and archive-only videos the same? 
  - Are the live+archive students actually watching the video when it is live, or are they using the archive feature?
  - Do archive-only students who consistently watch at the same time do better? 
  - Does time/day of watching affect results? (archive-only students get the link at least [duration of class] later.)
You also need to control other interactions with the participants, track the results faithfully, avoid bias because instructors are more familiar with students from "live" interactions, ensure cohort size and result size are large enough to be meaningful, that group composition isn't biased by confounding factors, etc.

But random assignment is a good start!

Re: Surprising Things About School

#89

Post by austenallred »

randomdata wrote: post #86
austenallred wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "mini code bootcamp" doesn't prepare people for jobs, it is a "miniature" version of code bootcamps. It actually only prepares you to begin our full computer science academy, which is six months long. If you want the stats for our full computer science academy I can give you those; they're good. 50% hired within one month, median $90k salary.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm still most interested in the results of the 'failures'. What did the people who failed to compete the MOOCs end up doing? How about those who succeeded with the mini live classes, but did not continue into your full program?

I don’t have a good sense for what the “failures” went on to do, they fall off our radar.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#90

Post by jackgolding »

bartedinburgh wrote: post #54
jackgolding wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing a comment to share my similar story of a blue-collar upbringing, but realised that other than a few chance encounters most of the relevant mentorship I have gotten was as a professional or read in articles/books. The best things I've learned in life through tough lessons - the trick is don't fail too hard. The important stuff I learned before graduating my bachelors was things like: 1) It's better t…

Small fish in a big pond? I've heard a completely opposite advice stating that "in a big pond" there's much competition, and dominating a small niche yields better results. What is the rationale behind being a small fish in a big pond?

It's happened twice in my career.

Once choosing to do more difficult courses at a more prestigious university. I don't think this was great on my well being in the short term (always feel like the idiot in class) but in the long term being associated with the brand has helped A LOT. So it was probably more beneficial to get worse grades at a "better" uni.

Professionally rather than being a gas data scientist in a small city, moving to a more competitive more established field of web analytics/marketing (with many more peers) in a larger city has lead to a much higher salary.

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