The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#21

Post by sidww2 » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #15

'Only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education'? Not unless universities abandon the teaching of history, literature, philosophy, politics, economics, whatever etc., or perhaps Thrun is thinking they'll be a gigantic leap forward in developing machine intelligence able for instance to assess students' essays in these subjects. If anyone's seen the slightest evidence that this might happen I'd be more…

Indeed. And not just those subjects. Computers are still a very long way off from judging the correctness of say a human written proof or solution to a physics problem. Even in technical subjects universities will be impossible to replace without major major leaps in AI.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#22

Post by blahedo » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 4:00 PM UTC

One of the dirty little secrets (ok, not really a secret) of the education system (higher or otherwise) is that it's not just about helping the students learn, but also verifying that they have done so and credentialing them. Online education can potentially be pretty good at helping students learn (although, even at that, it's much weaker at helping the less-self-motivated students learn; you might regard that as either a plus or a minus, I suppose).

It's a lot less good at verifying it, especially if there's credentialing involved. As soon as the verification becomes high-stakes (due to a resultant credential---grade, course credit, etc), cheating becomes a big problem, and one not easily surmounted within the context of the online learning environments that have sprung up so far.

So if something like Thrun's class is really going to "change higher learning forever", one of those changes may have to be a separation of the teaching/learning component and the verification/credentialing component. The teachers could then say, learn it or don't, I'll help but I'm not your taskmaster... and then if the students want to prove to anyone else that they learned something from it, they have to figure out some other way to do that, because transcripts won't cut it.

Actually, I could kind of get behind that.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#23

Post by randomdata » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 5:25 PM UTC

blahedo wrote: post #22

One of the dirty little secrets (ok, not really a secret) of the education system (higher or otherwise) is that it's not just about helping the students learn, but also verifying that they have done so and credentialing them. Online education can potentially be pretty good at helping students learn (although, even at that, it's much weaker at helping the less-self-motivated students learn; you might regard that as ei…

Do credentials even matter to anyone?

* You have Joel Spolsky writing about CS grads who cannot even pass the FizzBuzz test

* You have companies like 37signals talking about some of their best hires not having any credentials at all

* You have Google (and now everyone else, it seems) giving intense testing to all potential hires -- if you already have the credentials to prove you can do the work, why do you need to be tested?

I feel the online schools have popped up at just the right time. The world is moving on from the traditional education accreditation model, as the idea of giving credentials has proven to not work (see above). However, you still need to be able to walk the walk, and taking courses online is one way to get there.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#24

Post by capsule_toy » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 5:25 PM UTC

blahedo wrote: post #22

One of the dirty little secrets (ok, not really a secret) of the education system (higher or otherwise) is that it's not just about helping the students learn, but also verifying that they have done so and credentialing them. Online education can potentially be pretty good at helping students learn (although, even at that, it's much weaker at helping the less-self-motivated students learn; you might regard that as ei…

There are already systems in place to handle verified testing, like GRE and CPA exams. There are online courses that have homework and reading components online, but test offline.

For non-tests, students can and do cheat at regular Universities.

I completely agree that for this system to work, a verification/credentialing component is needed and I actually believe that the money will be there. Give away the lectures and problem assignments but make money off of more personal tutoring and the credentials.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#25

Post by capsule_toy » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

steveissuperman wrote: post #7

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #5

I think this is great and having such high quality level instructors is very good. However, I'd caution the typical view nowadays, especially around here, that this signals the end of traditional college and that we should just throw it out.

I agree. I don't know about computer science students, but as a civil engineering student college means a whole lot more to me than just being lectured at. I'm involved in half a dozen student organizations, and a lot of the time I find myself learning more outside the classroom working with professors and other students on competition teams and organizations than I am in class. It's sad that so many people think wat…

I agree that there's more to college than just the classes, but why can't we try to get some of this environment to exist outside of a college environment? What's sad to me is that once you leave undergrad, a lot of the things you talk about become closed off to people.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#26

Post by MaxGabriel » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

samrat wrote: post #4

For me to get a Statement of Accomplishment, will I have to go along with the course or can I start later and still get it. I'm interested in CS101 but the course is already in its fifth week.

A new class of CS101 starts April 16th

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#27

Post by mas644 » Sat, Mar 24, 2012, 6:35 PM UTC

What's most interesting and beautiful about the concept of free, open education is that people that would not have access to a college education can now have it. I'm talking about people that are the poorest of the poor who would never see a university let alone be able to attend one. A lot of folks on here are talking about certification...certification doesn't matter, rather creating wealth matters! We're on YC Hacker News right now, I'm sure everybody has read Paul Graham's "How To Create Wealth" essay (http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html). A person with a college degree or higher is useless to society if they can't produce something with it. However, somebody with little or zero formal education that can create something world changing IS valuable! Just giving people access to information allows them to change their world and create wealth. Some of you may have heard of William Kamkwamba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba) who created a windmill that could generate electricity just after seeing a picture of a windmill on the cover of a book written in a language he couldn't read. I saw an interview with him on "The Daily Show" where he joked that when he had the opportunity to access the Internet for the first time, he typed "windmill" into Google and was like "where was this when I was trying to build that damn windmill?!". People like him can do so much just with a picture -- imagine if he had access to science and math lectures from an amazing university like Stanford.

We have finally reached that point (or are at least damn close to it) where virtually every person on the planet, no matter how poor, will have access to a computer and the Internet. That is all a person needs to access these resources. I'm sure everybody has been following the Raspberry Pi, a full-fledged computer with video output for $25 - and it's only going to get cheaper. People like Thruun and Khan are dead-on. The only way to get people out of poverty is by empowering them with knowledge and education. In my opinion, the work these folks are doing are the seeds of a coming worldwide renaissance where poverty and ignorance will be eliminated.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#28

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sun, Mar 25, 2012, 12:45 AM UTC

robrenaud wrote: post #17

dancric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thrun seems to be getting into this mode as well with this line: "He’s thinking big now. He imagines that in 10 years, job applicants will tout their Udacity degrees. In 50 years, he says, there will be only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at being one of them. Thrun just has to plot the right course." Why is it that people (even apparently faculty like Thrun) seem to f…

In your world view, places of higher education and places of advanced research are strongly coupled. This does not need to be the case. Historically some great research labs had nothing to do with education (Bell Labs). I think Thrun's prediction is that there were be great institutions of higher education that have nothing to do with research. I certainly agree with that point. Of course, all disruptive innovation s…

I think you exemplify the more likely scenario, in my view, of the typical real, down and dirty use-cases for this stuff. That is people that are already undergraduates and graduate students using this as supplementary material either to their current classes or more probably extra-curricular.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#29

Post by nosecreek » Sun, Mar 25, 2012, 3:54 PM UTC

MaxGabriel wrote: post #26

samrat wrote: post #4

For me to get a Statement of Accomplishment, will I have to go along with the course or can I start later and still get it. I'm interested in CS101 but the course is already in its fifth week.

A new class of CS101 starts April 16th

What is your source for this? I signed up for the class before the new year and got an email in February saying the class would be delayed until the second half of March and I would be notified two weeks in advance of the class start. I haven't heard anything since then and the cs101 site doesn't appear to have any more information.

Re: The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever

#30

Post by narrator » Sun, Mar 25, 2012, 6:32 PM UTC

blahedo wrote: post #22

One of the dirty little secrets (ok, not really a secret) of the education system (higher or otherwise) is that it's not just about helping the students learn, but also verifying that they have done so and credentialing them. Online education can potentially be pretty good at helping students learn (although, even at that, it's much weaker at helping the less-self-motivated students learn; you might regard that as ei…

These classes aren't simply verified intelligence tests that employers can use to screen job applicants. If you learn something useful, you can use that knowledge to make money.