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Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

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Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#21

Post by michaelochurch »

timr wrote: post #13

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven protective bubble where the people who "want" education get to pret…

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven bubble where the people who "want" education get to pretend that they're learning without actually doing much of anything.

Course completion is a valid goal, and an important number. The point that I'm making is that a 5% completion rate is still a success, when multiplied by the massive number of people enrolling.

For an individual, if you watched the first three videos of linear algebra and stopped, you didn't learn the subject and can't honestly claim you took the course. If you finished it past-deadline but did all the exercises, you're probably ready to take the next course.

Udacity and Coursera are a step forward. Perfect? Far from it. Ready to replace Stanford? No, not even close. Is the world better with them than it would be without them? Absolutely.

Education, in technology, is there mainly to give you a root set and confidence. If you actually want to get into machine learning, you have to start reading papers anyway. That goes whether you're a graduate student or a DIYer who's been in industry for almost a decade like me.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#22

Post by slowjoe »

+1 to the "high course join, low course completion" crowd.

One thing that I did at work was establish a betting pool with two other co-workers on the Coursera C++ course that finished in December - completers would collect from non-completers. That is my one Coursera completion.

I'm pretty sure that attaching betting pools to MOOC sites would make a major difference to completion rates for participants.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#23

Post by AlexeyBrin »

michaelochurch wrote: post #18
mhurron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saved for future reference I wish that was possible with Coursera. I often need way more time then the structured course time. I don't interact with people on the forums so I don't care about that but locking me out of the videos means I don't get to see a lot of things I would like too.

If you start a Coursera course and don't finish it, you usually have persistent access to the course videos.

Not true for all courses (on Coursera), most of them will stop letting you access the videos after about 1 month from the course completion.

However, you can download the videos once the course is finished.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#24

Post by randomdata »

timr wrote: post #13

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven protective bubble where the people who "want" education get to pret…

> The world doesn't need another way to spoon-feed infotainment to well-off people with good academic backgrounds

Actually, that is exactly what the world needs, and the comments here further emphasize that the demand is there. Before these MOOCs appeared on the scene, the resources were almost non-existent. I don't care about school, I just want to learn. A service like Netflix, but with MOOC-like content would be perfect.

It saddens me that Thrun, who I have found to be exceptionally good at the job, is more interested in schooling than learning – but I get it from a business aspect. These results dash the hopes of what Udacity hinted would become their business model.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#25

Post by capnrefsmmat »

I don't see why MOOCs are pitched as revolutionary in teaching. They're still fundamentally lecture-based, and lectures are a terrible way to teach. I'm most familiar with research in physics education, where an average intro physics class fills only 24% of students' gaps in understanding.

On the other hand, some professors are experimenting with more interactive methods -- not less interactive MOOCs -- and getting three times better results:

http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/shutup.html

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#26

Post by hojoff79 »

I disagree that these are simply "books" and cannot supplement courses. There are many college students who simply attend lectures, turn in homework, ask a few questions and take their tests. MOOCs provide everything you need to have that experience virtually. I agree this model does not describe everyone, but I believe this is more an issue of motivation than resources.

Going back to the comparison with textbooks, there are a good number of people who could teach themselves subjects purely out of textbooks if they were motivated. But even after mastering several subject in this way, your employment prospects and marketability are not significantly increased. Instead, people do their learning (online or in person) under the umbrella of a College, who can offer them "credit" / verification to the rest of the world, which in turn increases employment prospects and marketability. The MOOC product does not offer that benefit upon completion (they give you a certificate, but right now it is not respected at all and therefore does not give the desired effect), so only those interested in the intellectual knowledge have motivation to complete the MOOC courses (not surprisingly, a very low number of people).

But I think if they give it more time they / the market could develop products that provide value for completion of these courses. Maybe some sort of independent service that tests and certifies completing students (i.e. what College Board has done for high school courses with the AP program). They could even track combinations of courses students complete to ensure a rounded knowledge of a subject area.

That is just one idea off the top of my head, but the point remains that this is an economic issue of motivation and benefits for completion, not an issues of resources.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#27

Post by waterlesscloud »

timr wrote: post #13

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven protective bubble where the people who "want" education get to pret…

But it is educating more people for less money.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#28

Post by psbp »

randomdata wrote: post #24
timr wrote: post #13

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven protective bubble where the people who "want" education get to pret…

> The world doesn't need another way to spoon-feed infotainment to well-off people with good academic backgrounds Actually, that is exactly what the world needs, and the comments here further emphasize that the demand is there. Before these MOOCs appeared on the scene, the resources were almost non-existent. I don't care about school, I just want to learn. A service like Netflix, but with MOOC-like content would be p…

It doesn't seem like Thrun put a lot of effort into popularizing the approach either. He gave 1.5 years and a pilot program to affirm a product that undermines years of ingrained ritual and validity? It doesn't seem like he was ever interested in changing education.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#29

Post by waterlesscloud »

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #23
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you start a Coursera course and don't finish it, you usually have persistent access to the course videos.

Not true for all courses (on Coursera), most of them will stop letting you access the videos after about 1 month from the course completion. However, you can download the videos once the course is finished.

It's definitely not my experience that "most" Coursera courses do this.

Of my 12 completed classes, only one does not allow access to the videos. Some of these classes are 2 years old. The one that doesn't have the old videos sent out an email saying they were removing them when they re-ran the class with new videos a year later.

Re: Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course

#30

Post by [deleted] »

michaelochurch wrote: post #21
timr wrote: post #13

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven protective bubble where the people who "want" education get to pret…

It cracks me up that all of the early comments on this thread are so insistent that course completion shouldn't be a goal. Anyone who has taught a college course can tell you that self-reported satisfaction rates are useless as an educational metric. Everyone "wants" to learn, but almost nobody puts in the effort. MOOCs have provided this hype-driven bubble where the people who "want" education get to pretend that th…

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