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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

#21

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

It's been over twenty years since I finished college. Last year I did a "certificate in quantitative finance" at UW which -- like the Stanford classes -- were both online and seemingly aimed at working professionals. It's interesting to compare these on three fronts:

1) The amount of rigor and work required for the Stanford classes was significantly less than the UW classes. I spent as much as 10 hours per week on the UW homework in addition to the 3-4 hours of video lectures. That's against about an hour for the Stanford homework and another 60-90 minutes for the lectures. I agree with the OP's description of the ML homework as starting out at a decent level of difficulty and quickly becoming trivially easy.

2) I found the format of the Stanford lectures considerably easier to follow. By making a canned recording, there's a huge amount of dead time which can simply be edited out of the lecture. That plus the ability to watch at 1.5x speed meant that I was rarely tempted to do something else at the same time as watching the lecture -- something which frequently caused me trouble with the UW classes.

3) The UW classes were something like $3500/course. If my employer hadn't been willing to reimburse me, I wouldn't have taken them.

All-in-all, I think the Stanford classes are great experiments in which I'm happy to participate. I'm planning to take five of them in Jan-Mar.

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

#22

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

diiq wrote: post #20

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 i…

I felt similarly dismayed about a machine learning course which doesn't demand knowledge of calculus.

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

#23

Post by benjvi »

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…

Hasn't education always been about providing systems that encourage people to challenge themselves and learn difficult things (and signalling)? I am sure that it has always been possible to go to the library and learn almost anything you might to. And, the internet has built upon that capability. So, its legitimate to criticise a class for not challenging you or not supporting you.

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

#24

Post by Hyena »

brudolph wrote: post #19
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.

Then it seems like there isn't so much a problem and the course is plausibly performing its intended function. Obviously the course was designed by Stanford to fill some role; unless you think that the course had a design flaw only detectable once it got rolling, then the best assumption would be that your expectations were wrong.

Of course, you could certainly have asked, as a Stanford student, what drove the design of the course and how the professor actually felt about the execution. That would have been an interesting follow up.

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

#25

Post by Jun8 »

He says:

"Stanford “free” classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does."

which does seem to be a forceful point. However, checking the FAQ (http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2) we find that they are funded completely from outside sources. So this guy didn't even bother to do some basic Google checking.

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

#26

Post by clavalle »

There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes.

Example: The 'level 1' or 'core' videos and assignments can be a base and offered for free and be of a similar duration and difficulty as the class now...

'Level 2' would either replace or augment the 'level 1' and would be more advanced and require some knowledge of pre-requisites and more 'synthesis' or 'critical' style assignments and less hand holding. Maybe they could charge for access to this level...

'Level 3 etc' could go deeper into the topic and perhaps offer more mathematical rigor or dive into more advanced topics or expose students to related current research etc. The assignments could also be tougher and more free form. Depending on how much human interaction is needed on the assignments and whatnot, they could justify a much higher price...

I would be very interested in a program that had this kind of format.

It would allow for exploration without too much commitment but a deep dive on topics that are interesting and perhaps a window into a community of people exploring the same topics...

If I were paying Stanford level tuition for the class as it stands now, I'd be a bit disappointed too.

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

#27

Post by sshrin »

Jun8 wrote: post #25

He says: "Stanford “free” classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does." which does seem to be a forceful point. However, checking the FAQ ( http://see.stanford.edu/see/faq.aspx#aboutq2 ) we find that they are funded completely from outside sourc…

As far as I know, the Stanford online courses are NOT the same as the ones listed on the SEE page.

They seem to be two different initiatives. I know for sure that the ones on the SEE page are recorded video lectures from the actual live classes.

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

#28

Post by mikedmiked »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #21

It's been over twenty years since I finished college. Last year I did a "certificate in quantitative finance" at UW which -- like the Stanford classes -- were both online and seemingly aimed at working professionals. It's interesting to compare these on three fronts: 1) The amount of rigor and work required for the Stanford classes was significantly less than the UW classes. I spent as much as 10 hours per week on th…

Were you a quant before you took the UW classes?

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

#29

Post by jmilloy »

clavalle wrote: post #26

There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes. Example: The 'level 1' or 'core' videos and assignments can be a base and offered for free and be of a similar duration and difficulty as the class now... 'Level 2' would either replace or augment the 'level 1' and would be more advanced and require some knowledge of pre-requisites and more 'synthesis' or 'critical' style assignments…

> There is no reason that there could not be a graduated difficulty for these classes.

Of course there is. These classes are provided for free, yet require time and money and effort. You've likely more than tripled the required resources to produce the class.

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

#30

Post by kenjackson »

It's unclear to me if this guy didn't learn enough or if it just wasn't hard enough. I do personally think that some courses are hard for the sake of being hard. If he learned the material stated in the syllabus and it was easy, then that's a really great thing and a tribute to the teaching.
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