Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade • Hacker News Board

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#21

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #8

seattle_spring wrote: post #3

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only g…

I did one of their early courses, crypto 1, which I found useful and enlightening. Shamr it didn't take off but then there was no business model AFAICT

I took a few courses.

The certs were never really worth much and, without the certs being valuable, not many people were willing to pay.

Some of the videos were good. But there's no shortage of videos online. Mostly for programming specifically, autograding had some value--when it worked. Discussion forums were mostly worthless and any meaningful interactions with the people teaching the courses were limited at best.

There are plenty of relatively inexpensive options for motivated people who don't care about a piece of paper to learn about stuff. Some MOOCs did a bit better than OCW or iTunes University sort of things. But there wasn't a business model for anything beyond Lynda type of instruction.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#22

Post by unreal37 » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #8

seattle_spring wrote: post #3

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only g…

I did one of their early courses, crypto 1, which I found useful and enlightening. Shamr it didn't take off but then there was no business model AFAICT

Coursera had $140 million in revenue in 2018.[1]

No business model you say?

https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-2018-revenue-14...

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#23

Post by unreal37 » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

brians wrote: post #19

What’s worked in Ed-tech—ever? Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading so much easier , saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting. Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from “repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]” Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew,…

I'd say Lynda.com was hugely successful.

Or is that not considered Ed-Tech?

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#24

Post by naniwaduni » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

kilroy_jones wrote: post #16

pg_bot wrote: post #12

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanic…

The question then becomes is that the type of student you want to create? Any elementary school teacher who frequently rewards students with candy can tell you horror stories of what this sort of system leads to. Every task becomes a bargain of 'what will I get for doing this?' as opposed to building an innate desire to learn. Education is broken, but going this route won't fix much. Fixing standardized tests, or scr…

You just need to bootstrap the learning far enough for them to see the big picture where the learning provides concrete value to the student!

... you'd also need that last bit to be true.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#25

Post by fouc » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #20

I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others. There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience. The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- deeply , I mean like…

In my opinion.. Ed-tech will never truly be successful if it is B2B and focused on teaching.

The real problem to be solved is LEARNING. The goals of teaching and learning are not the same.

Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#26

Post by mlyle » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

brians wrote: post #19

What’s worked in Ed-tech—ever? Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading so much easier , saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting. Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from “repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]” Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew,…

Khan is pretty awesome. I'm using it "flipped" with my kids-- they watch a video and do a problem set, and then we talk about it. Mastery challenges figure out whether things are actually retained. They're motivated to earn energy points and avatars. (They should have more rewards, though, because they're running out of things to look forward to).

My middle kid just did two years of math in 4-5 weeks. Now we're free to talk about fun math stuff.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#27

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #22

Nursie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did one of their early courses, crypto 1, which I found useful and enlightening. Shamr it didn't take off but then there was no business model AFAICT

Coursera had $140 million in revenue in 2018.[1] No business model you say? https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-2018-revenue-14...

They raised over $300 million and I don't know their profits.

Like one or two other of these firms, they basically pivoted to corporate training which has long been a reasonable if hardly breakout business. That's where Coursera (and I believe Udemy is) is today. It's not the disrupt education MOOC idea that was the original plan though.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#28

Post by fouc » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #3

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only g…

Yeah makes sense. Coursera isn't actually a disruption of education.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#29

Post by rsanek » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

pg_bot wrote: post #12

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanic…

Punished by Rewards [0] examines some of the downsides with this approach.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#30

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #23

brians wrote: post #19

What’s worked in Ed-tech—ever? Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading so much easier , saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting. Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from “repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]” Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew,…

I'd say Lynda.com was hugely successful. Or is that not considered Ed-Tech?

I suspect vocational training is considered old hat and boring. I get Lynda through my company and it can be pretty good. But it's not really that different from the sort of online training courses I've had access to in one form or another for ages.