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Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

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Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#11

Post by brudolph »

tlammens wrote: post #6

According to the website http://cs229a.stanford.edu/ there are class meetings, according to the blogpost everything is done solitary? Another difference with the course offered to the public is that there is an open ended project. If he really wanted a harder class, why not take CS229 and not CS229A... If you want something to be harder, to get more out of something you should pursue it yourself, not depend on others…

Class meetings were optional (which I did attend) and only a fraction of the students actually attended. I don't have a problem with cs229a being easier than 229, but the thing is a lot of other classes have now turned to the online format with no alternative (like 229 to 229a). Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#12

Post by pg_bot »

tlammens wrote: post #9
pg_bot wrote: post #8

I have watched a few of the online lectures offered by Stanford and I can't help but notice that the audio and video quality of the lectures is terrible. The video will not track the lecturer, and the audio will randomly cut in and out for long periods of time. (If I remember correctly, one lecture was missing half its audio) Also, I am unsure of the class sizes at Stanford but it seems like no one can arrive on time…

The online lectures you are talking about are the ones on youtube. They are not the same as the ones used in ml-class.org. The latter ones are in a completely different format. It is not just a recording of a "normal" lecture...

I am talking about the open courseware offered here http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php I am unsure if these are the same videos offered on youtube, however by taking a glance at the website it looks like they are the exact same classes.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#13

Post by [deleted] »

tlammens wrote: post #9
pg_bot wrote: post #8

I have watched a few of the online lectures offered by Stanford and I can't help but notice that the audio and video quality of the lectures is terrible. The video will not track the lecturer, and the audio will randomly cut in and out for long periods of time. (If I remember correctly, one lecture was missing half its audio) Also, I am unsure of the class sizes at Stanford but it seems like no one can arrive on time…

The online lectures you are talking about are the ones on youtube. They are not the same as the ones used in ml-class.org. The latter ones are in a completely different format. It is not just a recording of a "normal" lecture...

[deleted]

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#14

Post by tlammens »

pg_bot wrote: post #12
tlammens wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The online lectures you are talking about are the ones on youtube. They are not the same as the ones used in ml-class.org. The latter ones are in a completely different format. It is not just a recording of a "normal" lecture...

I am talking about the open courseware offered here http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php I am unsure if these are the same videos offered on youtube, however by taking a glance at the website it looks like they are the exact same classes.

If I understood correctly, those were a predecessor of the current lectures. I had no problems with audio missing. (but yes quality could have been better)

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#16

Post by pitt1980 »

swalsh wrote: post #4

I think there's a great opportunity to take online classes to the masses without sacrificing the quality of a brick and mortar education. These classes don't need to be offered free, just cheap. If they charged $10 for the whole class (a steal really!) they'd make $1,000,000 a semester per class. That should pay for the bandwidth, and teacher, and material. Scale that to less niche classes, you have a real business!…

I think your math is a little off, 100K signed up for the AI class, only 40K actually turned in a HW, guessing that less than 20K actually finished,

guessing none of the classes this spring will have anything close to that enrollment

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#17

Post by absconditus »

johnohara wrote: post #7

Put down the pen. MIT, Stanford, et.al. have already done the math on this. 20,000 "certification" exams @ $99.00 each is not insignificant. It's just shy of 40 full-time students @ $50,000 per year. Heats a lot of buildings.

Principles be damned, there is money to be made!

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#19

Post by brudolph »

Hyena wrote: post #15

This post needs a comparison with CS229a prior to the online courses. Was the course harder before online classes and then got significantly dumbed down? Or was the course easy enough that it was a good candidate for the project?

CS229a didn't exist prior to the online courses.

Re: Stanford Free Classes – A review from a Stanford Student

#20

Post by diiq »

My degree is in Fine Art, and I thought the class was pointlessly easy. Fix the class in two easy steps:

Lecture live, record the lectures. EVERY speaker is more effective when they have the feedback of their audience's faces.

Expect the members of the public to meet the class' standard, don't shrivel the curriculum to match the public. An applied CS course that doesn't demand programming is bizarre. Flunk everyone if you have to. Grades should perhaps reflect understanding?

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