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Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers

udacity.blogspot.com

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Re: Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers

#31

Post by Johnyma22 »

evoxed wrote: post #8

I hate Pearson products with a passion (save for a few imprints and assorted acquisitions). This is a great step though for both companies, so hopefully it works out for both. Pearson's online components has included some of the worst software I've ever had to deal with– maybe thanks to this, future students will never have to deal with it again. Udacity on the other hand has been great, so it's all very exciting any…

Pearson are just a big acquisition/sales company so have some good/some bad products. Their model of business is not where I would personally hedge my bets if I wanted my product to be successful. Udacity probably have no idea how difficult it will be to work with Pearson yet.

If the partnership gets it right then Pearson will look to acquire Udacity, given Pearson's track record of how little they innovate after acquisition this may be damaging to Udacity's long term goals however if the stakeholders of Udacity are looking for a quick out of the market then it might be ideal for them.

Re: Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers

#32

Post by guiambros »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
mhurron wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Coursera and hating Java have to do with each other?

A bunch of their courses (including their algorithms courses) are in Java, which makes me skeptical of how good their taste is. It's a strong red flag that they're just licensing content without any understand of the actual content matter and the quality of what they're teaching. I could be wrong, but that's definitely the impression I get based on both the fact that they're using Java and the classes are structured…

Coursera is pretty language neutral. I did Algo I and used Python. Other students used C, C++, Java. And when I did Machine Learning the recommended language was Octave/Matlab (but you could use Python if you know what you're doing).

Re: Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers

#34

Post by learnyearn »

keithnoizu wrote: post #16

I'd rather see web-cam based proctoring or a similar solution that would allow for some accreditation while letting udacity still control costs and provide a cheaper overall examination process to its end users.

I came across this recently: http://www.proctoru.com/

The endpoint is a model that will satisfy the employers - whether that's webcam or live proctoring or any combination thereof is irrelevant.

One variant of live proctoring could be an arrangement in which universities give students a number of online options to fulfill a particular requirement - cs, math, physics, etc - and administer their own exams. So the university would simply use it's brand to issue the stamp of quality. In a sense - this is cannibalism for the university. But I think there are public schools that are struggling to serve their students in a financially feasible way. This could be a good way to streamline...

Re: Udacity in partnership with Pearson VUE announces testing centers

#35

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
mhurron wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Coursera and hating Java have to do with each other?

A bunch of their courses (including their algorithms courses) are in Java, which makes me skeptical of how good their taste is. It's a strong red flag that they're just licensing content without any understand of the actual content matter and the quality of what they're teaching. I could be wrong, but that's definitely the impression I get based on both the fact that they're using Java and the classes are structured…

Your reply is hilariously naive and insane. Have you even looked at it? It's Stanford professors, who also teach Stanford versions of the same courses.

Andrew Ng, director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence lab, also the associate professor teaching "CS229: Machine Learning" and "CS221: AI" himself teaches the Coursera Machine Learning class.

Alex Aiken[1] teaches compilers. Tim Roughgarden[2][3] teaches the algorithms class.

And you are going to say they have poor taste and are just licensing content that they don't understand?

Java being one of Google's 3 official languages must be a red flag of their poor understanding and taste too I suppose :)

[1] http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/

[2] http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=4934147&srt=all&#3...

[3] http://soe.stanford.edu/research/surreal.htm

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