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Surprising Things About School

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Re: Surprising Things About School

#111

Post by austenallred »

tsumnia wrote: post #104
austenallred wrote: post #57

OP here, also happen to be a YC founder (S17 - https://lambdaschool.com ). Shocked to see this on HN. A lot of people are asking me about number 7: > 7. We had one student on the edge of homelessness, was $400 short on bills and almost had to quit because of that. I personally loaned him the money, and his income moved from $10/hr to $70k+/yr. It only took $400, but he didn’t have anywhere to get that from. Insane. W…

With respect to #15 and 16, how is LambdaSchool not the same AND what happens if your numbers do not go as projected? How will you avoid becoming these points in the future if LambdaSchool does not gain traction?

We don't get paid unless our students get a job (we're $0 until you're making $50k), so we would go out of business if that didn't happen.

We have 3x as much coursework as code bootcamps, spend a lot of time in lower-level fundamentals, spend time in CS theory, write JavaScript, Python, and C. It's a pretty big difference from "build your first javascript app!"

Re: Surprising Things About School

#112

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dsr_ wrote: post #46
austenallred wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here (shocked to see this on HN): The context is missing but is important. When I say MOOCs have failed I mean something very specific: asynchronous online learning has proven to be so dramatically less effective than synchronous, guided learning. Better than nothing existing, but we’re learning that only a small subset of people are able to effectively learn from them. In other words, take a random sample of 100…

Major counterproof: The Open University. Sounds like MOOCs need to learn from educational institutions that actually have a track record in distance learning.

The big difference is you have to pay for the OU, there is a commitment up front that filters out a lot of people.

Saying MOOCS are a failure because only 2% complete the course is like saying the OU is a failure because only 2% of their web site visitors sign up.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#113

Post by astrodev »

artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

Exactly. I completed 5 out of ~50 courses I have ever enrolled in. One of the courses I did not complete was instrumental in getting me into graduate school in a field unrelated to my formal background. Focusing on the completion rates misses the point.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#114

Post by austenallred »

randomdata wrote: post #95
austenallred wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is unfortunate, although I understand the practical reasons for why that is the case. However, how do we resolve the bias of only looking at the success stories? What if all of the 'failures' also went on to $90k average development jobs within the first month of quitting the MOOC? $90k developer jobs are not exactly difficult to come by in the current market to anyone who has expressed an interest in programmin…

As I stated above, we've A/B tested it with random samples, but it's hard to get any data on "failure to complete" populations because of obvious sampling bias

Re: Surprising Things About School

#115

Post by astrodev »

tsumnia wrote: post #100
artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to tak…

> If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it

> If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful.

How is the completion rate a better measure of value added than the absolute number of finishers?

Re: Surprising Things About School

#116

Post by dqpb »

tsumnia wrote: post #100
artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to tak…

>some never even log in to take MOOCs they register fo

So what? How is this at all relevant?

If we look at how many people have walked into a bookstore or library, have browsed through a book but never bothered to actually buy and read it, would we say books are a failure? Would you say books have a 95% fail rate? This is such a pointless train of thought.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#117

Post by nmca »

Anecdotally, I think I signed up for a MOOC back when that's what you had to do to hear Hinton's explanation of RMSProp. Of course I didn't complete it; I just fished out the bit I needed. I'm deeply dubious of these completion metrics...

Re: Surprising Things About School

#118

Post by twblalock »

dqpb wrote: post #116
tsumnia wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms. However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to tak…

> some never even log in to take MOOCs they register fo So what? How is this at all relevant? If we look at how many people have walked into a bookstore or library, have browsed through a book but never bothered to actually buy and read it, would we say books are a failure? Would you say books have a 95% fail rate? This is such a pointless train of thought.

Why did you decide that MOOCs should be held to the same standard as libraries or bookstores?

MOOCs are marketed as courses, and sometimes as an alternative form of higher education. Furthermore, I doubt the people who go to the trouble of designing curricula for MOOCs expect students to drop out partway through. Comparing MOOCs to college courses seems like a better match to the image the MOOC companies themselves have promoted. And if we make that comparison, completion definitely matters.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#120

Post by romaniv »

>Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s

Before: simply getting familiar with a subject required me to jump through bureaucratic admission hoops, go through arbitrary prerequisites, pay tons of money, bend my life around some class schedule and then get mediocre lecturing from some random guy who happened to teach the subject at the nearby university at that time.

After: I can watch lectures from world-class professors and universities at any time, starting with any difficulty level, on a wide variety of subjects. I can also get free help from other people if I need to.

How is this a failure? MOOCs are one of the greatest thing that ever happened to the Internet and education.

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