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MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

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Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#131

Post by truth_ »

kobiguru wrote: post #36

I am so happy that NPTEL NOC[1] and NPTEl Lectures [2] and Swayam[3] exists. These are indian government funded Moocs on almost everything engineering [1] https://nptel.ac.in/noc/noc_course.html [2] https://nptel.ac.in/course.html [3] https://swayam.gov.in/explorer

Quality of most of the courses is horrible, and nowhere nearly comparable to what you get from a Harvard or MIT course. The professors use very old PowerPoint slides and they themselves are not interested in teaching.

Programming problems are dull and boring.

However, there are exceptions. The Discrete Math course taught by IIT-Ropar is among the most amazing introductory DM course I have ever seen- taken in person or online.

There's also a 40 lecture Japanese course which is also quite good.

Indian schools are highly credentialist, so it is worth checking the backgrounds of the Professors beforehand. Do they have degrees from abroad? Are they interesting persons? And so on.

Only then enroll in an NPTEL course.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#132

Post by jrochkind1 »

itsbenweeks wrote: post #117
ecshafer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are basically graduate certificates, which are a normal university thing. You take 3-5 graduate courses, they give you a certificate saying that you did this, you give them money. Not a full blown masters, thus the micromasters branding, but it can open the door to changing a career or entering a specialization.

Its even less than that. This micro masters is sold as an entry point for a full-fledged masters program. The order of operations is something like: 1. Complete the micromasters courses at your speed. 2. Get a passing grade in a proctored exam. 3. Get accepted to a masters program with 1/2 of your credits taken care of. 4. Finish the masters degree on-campus.

i don't know if that's "less" or "more" than a graduate certificate. Certificates don't usually give you half the credits toward a masters program at the same university, do they?

I can see this being great "marketing" for the university too though -- once you got the "micromasters", the only way to get half your credits toward a degree is to go to the same university that gave you the micromasters (if you can get accepted, they took your money for the micromasters without promising that) -- they've kind of locked you in.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#133

Post by shkkmo »

itsoktocry wrote: post #120
shkkmo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But doing dishes during a lecture seems antithetical to what they are trying to achieve. They are trying to exclude large swathes of the population? It is extremely common for people with ADD to focus better when they keep the part of their brain that distracts them busy. In college I folded origami in lectures so that my brain wouldn't go off on tangents that would lead to me tuning out significant sections of the…

> It is extremely common for people with ADD to focus better when they keep the part of their brain that distracts them busy. They should cater to those people as opposed to other people for whom bite-sized learning works better? When did we become a society that expects everyone else to cater to our specific needs? No one is being "excluded". If that's the way you need to learn, fantastic. There are options out ther…

> They should cater to those people as opposed to other people for whom bite-sized learning works better?

I didn't say that. The claim was made that learning in this method is incompatible with taking a college level course. I was demonstrating how that attitude is both blatantly false and exclusionary.

> When did we become a society that expects everyone else to cater to our specific needs?

The value of accessibility and inclusivity in education has long been recognized. Why does online learning get a pass from considering this?

Edit: There is no problem with one person saying "I learn better this way" and someone else saying ”I learn better this other way". The problem is when people say "the way you learn is inferior and not suited to college level material" because that is exclusionary.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#134

Post by MR4D »

throwawaygh wrote: post #108
MR4D wrote: post #96

This makes no sense. They could do a simple transaction transferring it to a 401c3 entity and be done with it. The idea of a public company, a public benefit company, a university, a nonprofit, and 800 million dollars changing hands in this complicated of a transaction seems incongruous.

Harvard and MIT are selling the right to use their name-marks in a limited context for $800mm, which they will now invest in becoming leading institutions in AI teaching/tutoring. They also get to divest themselves of something that was (perceived as) cutting-edge and world-changing 20 years ago but is no longer particularly hot/novel. Doing MOOCs was good business for Harvard/MIT like 10-15 years ago when designing…

FTA: "...2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization..."

While that org is led by Harvard and MIT, the institutions are not getting the money. Which begs the question - why didn't the edX organization just sell off the IP to 2U? would have been much cleaner.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#136

Post by stonogo »

willyg123 wrote: post #115
brutus1213 wrote: post #4

This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are ma…

> (highly paid execs...) EDX's IRS Form 990 for 2020 shows five executive making over $800k [1] [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460...

Not bad for an hour a week, eh?

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#137

Post by narraturgy »

brutus1213 wrote: post #4

This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are ma…

>highly paid execs, insane amount of money spent on marketing

I don't understand how not-for-profit orgs are supposed to succeed when they are constantly hampered by being expected to pay theirbwmployees low wages and not market themselves or spread the word because if they spend too much money doing these things then they are suddenly "bad" organizations. If not-for-profits are not allowed to compete in the market with for-profit organizations by offering competitive wages and utilizing competitive marketing budgets, then it's no wonder that charity is generally so ineffective. I suspect that the average armchair marketing executive might not be a good judge of what an "appropriate" marketing budget is.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#138

Post by redgrange »

benrbray wrote: post #6
brutus1213 wrote: post #4

This seems like terrible news :( After the focus on monetization of platforms such as udemy and coursera, edx seemed to give me a sliver of hope that education will be open. Given the immense trust funds held by Harvard and MIT, I had hoped money would not be a factor and these institutions would be able to develop their platform in the open. I'd like to add .. non-profit does not mean free to end users. There are ma…

I tried to use edX for the first time recently to take a "food science" course, but was disappointed to see that they've resorted to the same dark patterns as Coursera and others, such as: * Removing your access to course materials when the class is done, and disallowing access to past versions of the class. * Pressuring you into joining as many courses as possible, due to fear of missing out. When you visit the site…

Maybe their internal research shows significant benefits to the short chunks of lecture content.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#139

Post by realreality »

whimsicalism wrote: post #118
tehjoker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people most in need of education have the least money. Monetize that. Education is a public good that requires social subsidy and personal interaction.

Monetize not having money? Pray tell your easy solution.

Create some sort of entity that hands out money to people who agree to pay the money back in the future, plus some percentage interest.

If anybody figures out how to do this, they could make a lot of profit.

Re: MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U

#140

Post by narraturgy »

wpietri wrote: post #82
mattferderer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is not just a non-profit issue. This is an everyone issue. One popular trending reason is that boards ask an outside firm what an average CEO makes at a similar size company. Then they decide to pay them slightly above average if they like them. Over 40 years this tends to sky rocket the salary of CEOs to where everyone wants an MBA just so they can get paid crazy amounts of work compared to what t…

Oh, sure, I think it's also terrible in for-profit companies. I think it's a source of vast economic inefficiency. But the usual excuses for it don't apply at nonprofits.

I disagree. It seems unreasonable to hold not-for-profits to such an extreme ethical standard. They're already doing charitable work, why must they also be expected to lead the charge on unrelated social matters besides the one they chose?

I agree that executives are paid too much, but I don't expect a Soup Kitchen to be posting on social media about how they are fighting against discrimination of purple elephantfolk in Norway.

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