Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Udacity and the future of online universities

blogs.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#11

Post by ap22213 »

I hope this is just a first step toward big future ideas.

Many highly sought professors already have great brands, and I'm surprised that they are so highly underpaid for what they do. Many of them could be getting paid a lot more in scale. Further, they could also be providing value-add services to directly validate some of the best on-line students and grant certifications of expertise. Think of the mozilla badge model [1]. There are hundreds of ways to spin out revenue and scale that model.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/About

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#12

Post by aseembehl »

ramanujan wrote: post #10

Part of the backstory here is that ai-class.com is by Udacity (Sebastian Thrun), while ml-class.org and pgm-class.org are by Coursera (Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller). Formerly colleagues from the same department, now competitors with very similar education startups, all the way down to the naming conventions. Lot of fur flying about who copied who. Coursera has been launching a ton of classes[1]. Probably Sebastian fee…

Could you please elaborate on how you reached such an interesting reasoning behind the launch of these classes.

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#13

Post by sown »

I think Stanford is more for keeping things closer to the status quo. Students in seats is how they make their money, after all. Not to say that they won't make courses online. I think they would be more than happy to charge $5,000 like they do through SCPD. However, if this develops the way I think it does, the economies of scale have to take over, right, especially after reading about Professor Norvig's discussion last month (http://remotelearningproject.com/interviews/peter-norvig/) about potential business models that try to keep it mostly free.

I'm very excited.

PS: I've noted that the PGM course website says it'll start in Feburary.

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#17

Post by unignorant »

aseembehl wrote: post #12
ramanujan wrote: post #10

Part of the backstory here is that ai-class.com is by Udacity (Sebastian Thrun), while ml-class.org and pgm-class.org are by Coursera (Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller). Formerly colleagues from the same department, now competitors with very similar education startups, all the way down to the naming conventions. Lot of fur flying about who copied who. Coursera has been launching a ton of classes[1]. Probably Sebastian fee…

Could you please elaborate on how you reached such an interesting reasoning behind the launch of these classes.

I can confirm that his reasoning is correct. The word on the street is that Sebastian alienated the powers-that-be at Stanford.

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#18

Post by nluqo »

AdamTReineke wrote: post #15
melling wrote: post #14

What happens to the self-driving car? That was his life's dream.

In a few years, he'll teach a class on that too and... mission accomplished! ;-)

Not in a few years, but in one month:

CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car http://youtu.be/aI8SQCEUYrg

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#19

Post by mtrn »

iamabhi9 wrote: post #8
mtrn wrote: post #6

Took the AI class and it was just amazing. I never had a professor more passionate (yet still rational :) about a subject. Even though the course made the math and the background sound simple, it wasn't. There is a probably thin line between breaking-down things into a set of well-partitioned and easy to understand statements and oversimplifying really complex systems. Also, the applications (edge detectors, robotic…

Totally agreed. Prof. Thrun and Prof. Norvig made math an interesting part of the course. At the end of the course I found myself more motivated to learn mathematics than ever before.

Yes, and on a related note: Today morning I skimmed the preface to Computational Science and Engineering by Gilbert Strang, and he also states, that (at least some) math should be thought alongside applications and algorithms, which, since these used to be intense topics, have been traditionally separated by academic curricula.

AI class was a perfect example of that interleaved approach, I think.

Re: Udacity and the future of online universities

#20

Post by plinkplonk »

ramanujan wrote: post #10

Part of the backstory here is that ai-class.com is by Udacity (Sebastian Thrun), while ml-class.org and pgm-class.org are by Coursera (Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller). Formerly colleagues from the same department, now competitors with very similar education startups, all the way down to the naming conventions. Lot of fur flying about who copied who. Coursera has been launching a ton of classes[1]. Probably Sebastian fee…

" Formerly colleagues from the same department, now competitors with very similar education startups"

(Without taking sides, and somewhat tangentially) if true, we consumers are in for a good time. Competition,especially with such formidable people leading rival companies, is awesome.

Post reply on HN