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Surprising Things About School

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Re: Surprising Things About School

#71

Post by randomdata »

austenallred wrote: post #43
kbutler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you measuring the same level of motivation? From my anecdotal experience, the people taking the "live, guided course" have committed to: - synchronous attendance at a particular time, probably at a particular place - probably a dollar investment - face-to-face contact with instructor - near-traditional learning environment People taking a MOOC have committed to: - browsing on an electronic device There's gene…

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants?

For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than sitting in on a live class during the optimal employment search time?

If the goal is to find work, there is no incentive to keep going in the course after you have met your goal.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#72

Post by walshemj »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #15

"17. People rely mainly on their parents for advice on what to do about education, and that has to be among the worst places to go for educational advice" This one certainly hits me hard. With a mother who dropped out of university and a father who didn't go myself and my sister both have good degrees (she's a newly qualified Vet and I'm a startup's birth and death out of uni), and nowhere to get decent advice. I kno…

That depends on your parents class if your a bright working class kid whose parents didn't go to uni you don't get told the unspoken rules.

You also don't have access to the behind the scenes influence eg being a legacy at Harvard or similar, I was surprised to hear my mum saying I we had stayed in Brummagem they would have used my grandfathers influence to try and get me into King Edwards.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#73

Post by austenallred »

sp332 wrote: post #53

We’ve been reworked purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn entirely. The most frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?” and “donwe get a certificate for this?” It’s sad If the students had their own projects that they were working on, would you know about it? Offhand I'd guess they have things they'd rather be working on than your assigned coursework, so if there's no benefit, why do i…

It's a delicate balance. If we assign personal projects in the beginning many just say, "I don't know how to do this, I don't know what you want," and will flail because they're expecting more structure than a personal project can possibly give. You have to slowly train them to the point where they will try things on their own and can abandon your training wheels. It's like they're in a mental cage, I don't know how else to describe it.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#74

Post by walshemj »

sokoloff wrote: post #51
bitwize wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ended up railroaded onto a liberal arts education until I reached my community college, where I encountered people - not just professors - who knew that the magic hardware box could do other things besides send and receive email. True story: When I was in college, a girl came to me with a question: If she put Borland C++ on her laptop, could she compile programs on it just as easily as on her desktop? I replied t…

I was helping a math undergrad (senior, graduating with honors) from a top 50 university study for the actuarial exam. They were stuck on a question that amounted to "what's the volume of this circular cylinder?" As I walked them through that, it dawned on me that the problem wasn't recalling or applying the formula, but that they had no idea what x = cos theta, y = sin theta, theta ranges 0 to 2*pi, z ranges 0 to 2…

err this is level 2 technician stuff

Re: Surprising Things About School

#75

Post by brudgers »

austenallred wrote: post #43
kbutler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you measuring the same level of motivation? From my anecdotal experience, the people taking the "live, guided course" have committed to: - synchronous attendance at a particular time, probably at a particular place - probably a dollar investment - face-to-face contact with instructor - near-traditional learning environment People taking a MOOC have committed to: - browsing on an electronic device There's gene…

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

What studies would you cite for someone interested in learning more about the field?

Re: Surprising Things About School

#76

Post by sokoloff »

walshemj wrote: post #74
sokoloff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was helping a math undergrad (senior, graduating with honors) from a top 50 university study for the actuarial exam. They were stuck on a question that amounted to "what's the volume of this circular cylinder?" As I walked them through that, it dawned on me that the problem wasn't recalling or applying the formula, but that they had no idea what x = cos theta, y = sin theta, theta ranges 0 to 2*pi, z ranges 0 to 2…

err this is level 2 technician stuff

I agree. I also think that knowing cosine and sine are unit circle X and Y coordinates is at a similar level for university math majors.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#77

Post by dpark »

maxerickson wrote: post #66
dpark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4-year still matters a lot. The issue is that a 4-year from a state school has almost as much value as a 4-year from an Ivy League. A prestigious university on your resume will open a few extra doors, but in most disciplines it’s just not worth the extra cost. The University of Washington is $5.5k/semester (resident tuition). If you’re spending 20k/semester, you better be getting a degree from somewhere very presti…

For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. Such policy is even trickling down to public schools with big endowments: https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout (of course there's many more mediocr…

> For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free.

This isn’t entirely true. Tuition aid for most students is based on the parents’ income. My parents are (and were when I went to school) upper middle class on paper. They have never been great with money, though, so they couldn’t cover tuition out of picket and hadn’t set aside funding in advance. They definitely helped with living costs but tuition was covered by loans (and scholarships partially). So I left with loans to cover virtually all of my tuition.

If your parents are middle class and can’t cover your tuition, you’re probably in a similar situation. Combined with a low-demand degree, this could easily result in crippling debt.

> The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout

My sister did this. A couple of years at a private religious school before she transferred to a public school. The student loans from those couple of years are absurd and dwarf the rest of her loans. She’s still paying them off a decade later.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#78

Post by brudgers »

randomdata wrote: post #71
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants? For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than sitting in on a live class during the…

The student handbook for the author's school suggests a graduate should expect to spend three to six months applying for five jobs a day. That's about 500 to a 1000 applications following six months of 45 hours a week at their online school.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#79

Post by artimaeis »

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s"

I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books.

I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a single one of them. Instead I learned the concepts I needed to, maybe completed some test material if it was freely available, and moved on.

Some of those MOOCs were gateways into my career as a developer - so they were absolutely vital to me. This again seems to be an issue with measurement/metrics - I don't believe completion rates are worth that much in MOOCs, just like they aren't worth that much in technical books.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#80

Post by austenallred »

brudgers wrote: post #75
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific manner. Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking. We can also take students that ar…

What studies would you cite for someone interested in learning more about the field?

I'll dig some of them up later today, but it will be a bit as I need to finish some stuff.
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