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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

#71

Post by saraid216 »

varelse wrote: post #60

I enjoyed the Udacity AI course, but I was repeatedly frustrated by the many errors that were never corrected and especially Peter Norvig's nails on blackboard scribbling sounds with his felt tip. Am I the only one who could hear this? Overall, I think there was a real lack of attention to detail after an excellent job on getting the big picture right. That said, MOOCs have revolutionized my ability to keep up with t…

> I personally think the future of this business will involve celebrity teachers like Andrew Ng and Sebastian Thrun putting together more polished versions of their courses and then allowing a cottage industry to grow around tutoring people through them at their own pace rather than shoehorning a freestyle approach to learning into effective semesters and quarters.

This is actually fairly similar to my own classroom designs, so I wanted to call it out for emphasis.

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

#72

Post by michaelochurch »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #34
mrfusion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the motivation component also needs to be figured out. There's a huge amount of motivation in keeping up with a real world course, not falling behind your peers, and getting your money's worth. MOOC's can't really provide that. I've toyed with doing a startup in this regard. Perhaps something like gympact but targetted at MOOC's. I.e., you pledge a certain amount of money that you'll finish a course and lose…

The part of this discussion that gets swept aside in all the high-minded posturing about education is that most people see coursework as a chore, as something they have to do to get the piece of paper they want. As such, the unspoken "secret" about college courses is that most people do the least they feel they have to do. The majority of students are simply marking time. That's deadly in a MOOC because, well, there'…

My reply, which had to wait because of childish moderation ("submitting too fast"):

https://gist.github.com/michaelochurch/8339582

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

#73

Post by saraid216 »

my_username_is_ wrote: post #54
capnrefsmmat wrote: post #25

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 t…

Udacity, Thurin's MOOC platform, is interactive and was designed to not simply follow the lecture style of current classrooms

"Interactive" how? The quizzes? These have been a staple in current classrooms for a decades. Is there something else?

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

#74

Post by varelse »

aashaykumar92 wrote: post #70
varelse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to pay $150/course, that would end my usage of MOOCs. In contrast, I'd be happy to pay $5-$10/month for overall access to Coursera or Udacity (probably just Coursera actually given the quality issues I've seen on Udacity). But the minute you try to shoehorn me back into the traditional mode of learning, I'm going back to reading books at my own pace and timing. Can we pretty please finally have the 21st cent…

That doesn't solve the problem of completing a course, though.

The problem IMO is believing that not completing the course is in any way actually a problem. Ala carte learning for fun and profit works for me. I'm saying what it's worth to me as well. Maybe such beliefs should be studied across the customers of Coursera and Udacity to refine their business model?

Bonus points for figuring out that I download and save a lot of lecture material for later viewing because some professors force their content to expire and go away. This stuff is gold for passing the time on transcontinental flights.

Negative points for the absolutely godawful official Coursera mobile app in an age when Coursistant is both free and 100x better. Why did they even bother with such an obvious Acqui-hire in plain sight?

Finally, if people pay $X for a fancy certificate and then don't complete the course, sometimes it really should be considered their problem, not yours. You can't save a world stuck in a infinite loop of its own making. What's the old joke? How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

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

#75

Post by avenger123 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #34
mrfusion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the motivation component also needs to be figured out. There's a huge amount of motivation in keeping up with a real world course, not falling behind your peers, and getting your money's worth. MOOC's can't really provide that. I've toyed with doing a startup in this regard. Perhaps something like gympact but targetted at MOOC's. I.e., you pledge a certain amount of money that you'll finish a course and lose…

The part of this discussion that gets swept aside in all the high-minded posturing about education is that most people see coursework as a chore, as something they have to do to get the piece of paper they want. As such, the unspoken "secret" about college courses is that most people do the least they feel they have to do. The majority of students are simply marking time. That's deadly in a MOOC because, well, there'…

You have described the root of the problem.

I would imagine most people doing these courses are looking to either improve their work or get into new work. If all the major companies started to somehow make these MOOC courses similar to requiring a degree, the completion rate would likely skyrocket overnight. If there was a way for a company to say "if you have done these MOOC courses we will give you preferential treatment in your job application", it may make a big difference.

I also think the approach that Udacity is now taking could be very effective. Instead of going on offsite training for a week, employees can be rewarded for taking and completing a MOOC course over the span of 6-9 months.

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

#76

Post by alter8 »

mhurron wrote: post #14
fernly wrote: post #12

Right. The people who create MOOCs are professors who think of what they are making as _courses_ with all the attendant assumptions (grades, exams, success as completion with certain scores). The people who consume the MOOCs treat them as they would _books_ -- to be picked up, sampled, read for the good parts, saved for future reference. The "courses" offered by MOOCs are in fact, _multimedia books_ with an optional…

> 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.

There's a python script to download them. https://github.com/dgorissen/coursera-dl

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

#77

Post by saraid216 »

mlyang wrote: post #3

The thinking about MOOCs and their success metrics is flawed. We wouldn't measure the success of Wikipedia by the percentage of people who've read an entire Wiki article top to bottom for a particular topic they've searched for, why would we expect the same for MOOC courses? The reality is that it's just a great social good that these courses are available online and accessible to the select few who should choose to…

It's more layered than that.

If people merely wanted to get the information out there, and make it possible to self-educate, then they would develop... well... wikis. Websites. YouTube videos explaining concepts. And that'd be it: they'd judge their success on outreach, on page views and maybe comments and emails. You'd have Khan Academy, full stop.

But that's not actually all they want. They want to know that their students understood. And to do that, they need to have the student prove their understanding as feedback. That's what completion rate really means. It is the metric that professors and teachers are accustomed to measuring themselves by. They've been trained to recognize the quality of their work based on the pass/fail rate of their class.

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

#78

Post by mrfusion »

michaelochurch wrote: post #72
waterlesscloud wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of this discussion that gets swept aside in all the high-minded posturing about education is that most people see coursework as a chore, as something they have to do to get the piece of paper they want. As such, the unspoken "secret" about college courses is that most people do the least they feel they have to do. The majority of students are simply marking time. That's deadly in a MOOC because, well, there'…

My reply, which had to wait because of childish moderation ("submitting too fast"): https://gist.github.com/michaelochurch/8339582

That sounds true. I'm sorry you had to post elsewhere :-(

Any feedback on my startup idea? Or do you think there might be better ways to fix MOOC's?

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

#79

Post by nicholas73 »

Another thing that lowers course completion rates, unmentioned yet, is that most of Udacity's classes are on the challenging side of college courses. They are mostly STEM classes and many equivalent to upper division courses as well. So it isn't surprising the NPR article reports only the most studious SJSU students benefited. The vast majority of SJSU students, and students from other colleges as well, would find these courses challenging also, with or without in-person support.

I don't think that's an insurmountable problem, with the course notes being better designed and readily available (as compared to a disinterested professor + textbook). On the other side, many students don't bother talking to their professors and TAs anyway.

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

#80

Post by panarky »

tlb wrote: post #58
panarky wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter if 10,000 enroll with an 80% completion rate, or if 160,000 enroll with a 5% completion rate? The numerator is the important metric here, not the denominator.

It matters when you think about scaling up to replace colleges. Put 5 million college students / year through that funnel and you won't have an educated citizenry.

No, but if you put 100 million students / year through that funnel, you'll achieve meaningful learning for the same 5 million students, with access to the world's best instructors, at a fraction of the cost.

And the other 95 million will get more exposure to knowledge than they had before, even if they don't take it to completion.

It's hard for me to find the failure here.

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