Slashdot Mirror
A Free, High Quality On-Line University?
Lawrence Brown writes: "Michael Saylor, CEO of
MicroStrategy, has
donated $100 million towards creation of an on-line university which he says will offer an 'Ivy-League quality' education to anyone for free." Same idea as the Cooper Union. Okay, that's one billionaire putting his money to good use. What about the rest?
I'm taking classes at www.fernuni-hagen.de. Up till now it's not a real online university (you still get stuff mailed), but there's an area called the "Virtual University". It includes video conferences, newsgroups, downloadable tests/literature and the like... But, of course, you cant take your exams at home. ;-)
Cheating? I would imagine since this school is not fee based and about controlling the students like herds of sheep or trying to babysit the youth, most interested people would be focused on actually learning for thier own good. My thoughts of taking some useful classes are for my own utility and if they happen to show value as an employable skill in the future great. Perhaps there will be a need to audit or certify what a person who has learned if one wishes to market the skills in the workforce. I don't think this kind of school would be good for grading people under the traditional bell curve and weeding out perfectly good people who want to learn.
I hereby flame you.
That would be better, but the government would just remove other funding to compensate (q.v.: lottery).
BAHAAHAHHAHHA!!!! Brown.... that's funny... And what the hell is Reed?
The worst educational system in the developed world, bar none.
First of all, thats horseshit
It's accurate. The numbers are available. The situation is, by the way, widely bewailed by many people who live in those areas. It's no secret.
any comparative economic inequity you may perceive in the south (which once again is largely horseshit)
Again, the figures are available. Again, it's no secret. You have a choice between going into denial, or doing something to fix it.
is due [more] to larger historical trends than [to] any perceived adherence to privatization.
Yeah, larger historical trends like religiosity, conservativism, hostility towards education, fear of change, etc. Exactly what I was describing, in fact.
Some educators believe reducing assessment increases motivation and learning. (e.g. Pirsig mentioned that in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Not to mention several top U.S. colleges where they've been living the dream for decades, either doing away with grades entirely or removing them as a publicly available motivating factor: Hampshire College, University of California-Santa Cruz, St. John's College, and others.
It is accredited and its graduates qualify to take the california bar exam and practice law in california. At least according to their website :) http://www.concord.kaplan.edu
You are right. I think most of the posts I've read have gotten hung up on the label "Online University." If you take the connotations associated with a College and try to cram them into most people's idea of a web site, it's hard to envision how the project could work very well. But, if we think of this as a 100 Million dollar donation to create a massive repository of post high-school level infomation that will be made available to anyone for free, it is much easier to see how grand his idea really is.
Education without gradding is just a damn tutorial. Great for picking up a new skill but worthless to employers and further education.
Well, instead of deans, this university will have admins. That will keep the hackers at bay. As far as grading goes, there is software that can accurately grade papers.
We did an internal study at a major university (i.e. top 20 college) What we found is the following. In our large introductory classes...
What we have realized is that the typical universiy class room is a de facto distance learning environment that has all the disadvantages of distance learning without any of its advantages.
Don't confuse your fantasy of a college education with the reality.
this is a great idea...unfortunatley current copy write laws would severly inhibit a project of this kind. They are ill equipped to encompass any form of digital literature..... escpecially internet distributable material. It would end up being another MP3 fiascoe all over again. When will someone relize that with this new technology certain ideas about "ownership" will have to be re thought and done away with. Change is painful tho...so we suffer
>>it does _not_ need to be assessed to be of any value
>If it's goal is to act as a replacement for an ivy league college it needs to be accessed.
You're right in that part of an Ivy League degree is snob- and certification-value, but the other part is the top quality learning value. Assessment isn't required to learn, just motivation and access.
Some educators believe reducing assessment increases motivation and learning. (e.g. Pirsig mentioned that in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_).
Self-selected learners who can only be learning to understand, because there is zero certification-value, are likely to produce good results for the same kind of reasons open source development works... you do it because you want to.
RyanS
Also, there are plenty of companies working in this marketspace, producing methods for distance learning, that incorporate the personal intimacy of teacher/student relationship. See Centra, ilinc, horizonLive, and others. Clearly this is their dream, a world where inability to travel won't comprimise your ability to learn.
Strange how your words echo. Do you know who's seed money established ETS and the research for testing-tracking in U.S. schools? Andrew Carnegie- who climbed up snobbed by the Ivy League types.
Is this the last post? Often I find myself being the last, the slowest, the dumbest. Maybe someday I will make the first post. Hope it will have a lasting impact on my self esteem. If I can make it here I can make it anywhere. Please don't post below this. Slow and low.
And their hockey team sucks too!
probably cheaper to build a brick and mortar and hire some out of work PhDs to run it it.
It's quite possible. My father recently got his MBA via distance learning from Queens University in Canada. He watched videos along with books and documents as well as a bunch of frequently updated online content. He kept in touch with other students and professors through e-mail, message boards, and icq or phone in case of emergencies. Some of the projects made collaboration imperative, and most of these people being general technophobes did surprisingly well when forced to do so. However, they did meet a couple of times per semester, so it wasn't completely at distance.
I myself am a software engineer who collaborates with people daily in haifa, israel; some suburb of paris, france; austin, texas; toronto, canada; san jose, california and many other locations in a company across marketing, qa, r&d and management departments. We communicate via e-mail, icq, phone, random physical meeting, video over internet in netmeeting, application "sharing" in netmeeting, lotus notes for some departments, and a geographically centered collaboration system I built tailored to our particular workflow.
Of course, a large part of college/university is fucking around as well as social interaction. The education part, though, can be done very well online.
-Dennisp
this is the last post.
How about we make people who want grades, pay for them? (ie: pay for tests to assess if you're learning what you should be) The rest is all content that is put up, so anyone who wants to learn can.
Intensive instruction costs money. People who can do it themselves, do, and then pay for testing to validate what they've learned.
And all classes have forums, where the paying and the non-paying can talk/discuss/learn from each other.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
If the original poster had read the article, he would have seen that Steve Case has also put up $100 million for this project, that Bill Gates has pledged $1 billion for scholarships, and that Saylor came up with the idea while discussing philanthropy with other rich guys.
Honestly, these little cracks are getting ridiculous. Remember when a poster referred to WW2 vet Jack Valenti as a "Baby Boomer?"
Slashdot would do well to put forth some guidelines for its posters, particularly in light of the increased visibility given by the mainstream media of late.
1. Regardless of who pays (parents or students themselves v. government), the current 4-year college system is an incredibly expensive (both in time and money) and inefficient system whose output is, except in more-or-less technical subjects, creditialing and socialization. In the U.S., colleges were, until 50 years ago, reserved for the elites. Through easy availibility of college loans, now the bulk of U.S. high school graduates spend a great deal of time and money on an education that, more often than not, is not related to anything they ultimately do for a living. The widespread availability of college education has especially hurt those who, for economic reasons or otherwise, could not go to college -- it has created an often meaningless but insurmountable credentialing hurdle for non-graduates and has allowed many high schools to deteriorate to the point where they do not feel a need to ready non-college-bound students to join the work world.
2. Many components of the college system can be more cheaply delivered by other means -- whether online or via television, video tapes, local for-profit education arrangments or via Advanced Placement high school programs. For many students otherwise destined for 4-year colleges, these means can, at a minimum, be used to reduce a 4 year program to 3 years, enabling students to get both the substantive education as well as the socialization while saving time and money.
3. Many of the Slashdot comments mix arguments applicable to elite schools with arguments directed more at the trade-school end of the spectrum. I think availability of quality education at the less-elite end of the spectrum is probably more important to overall workforce quality and the democratic character of the nation than elite colleges, though with time I think it is desireable for the reputation/credentialing aspect of elite colleges to more closely reflect the reality of what goes on there. This has already happened to a greate extent: Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the only places were an Ivy League education is a real advantage is in finance, management consulting and law. I guess MIT, CalTech, Stanford and Berkeley probably have an analogous creditialing positions on the tech side, though.
4. In thinking about the on-line college question, people should be thinking about the longer-term effects of availability of online eduction on ways of organizing colleges. For instance:
Picture a university that was very open to online education (for instance, a state university that was eager/under funding pressure to deliver a quality education to as many students as possible but without the "status" anxieties that private and/or elite schools would have). Students could take as many on-line courses as they wanted for a lower cost, living either at home, in dorms, in the "college town" setting for the core physical college or elsewhere (for instance, if they wanted to do a part-time internship on the other side of the country (or even world))! They could be physically present in the college town for only those classes that required physical presence (for instance, organic chemistry lab or a small seminar on literature to be conducted by a top quality professor). One could even imagine that "college towns" could spring up without an anchor college -- for instance, a dorm/resort-like setting could be built near ski slopes or in Florida to serve as a location for students to congregate with others with their own interests (perhaps with some classroom facilities for visiting professors). Additionally, if enough colleges coordinated their curricula, it would be possible for students to hop from college to college, even for physically based classes.
5. Basically, colleges, like many competitive institutions, seek to package services in a way that makes it difficult for potential purchasers to comparison shop -- and thus are able to obtain excess profits (which they may waste on physical plant, etc.). Now that technology has provided a way to "disaggregate" the college package, we can expect traditional colleges and their allies (for instance, credentialed graduates) to resist. Obviously, the packaging/credentialing aspect of colleges has some worth, but I think, in time, alternative certification means can be used to replace this.
baby
There's also WAY more school here that you can get on a physical campus in fixed boring classes with your physical body. With something like this, it might be possible to test the limits of the humand mind by opening up a great deal of classes and timeshare between what interests the fancy at the moment. The colleges I remember like to control information and punish those who don't abide strictly by thier program.
The real route to free university education is for government to pay course fees, and provide a grant system, such as the one that's just about be clubbed to death in the UK. Yes, it means an increase in taxation in the short run, but once a generation of well educated graduates are unleashed on the nation, the increase in earnings that their degrees will bring will result in more tax going to the treasury.
;)
Oh, right, what America needs right now is more higher education degrees in the job market, paid for by the government. If only we had that generation of well-educated graduates to spark the Education Revolution, we'd be all right.
I don't want to sound like a jerk, but have you been to America recently? I know people with degrees in engineering (OK, nuclear engineering) who work in delis and pizzarias.
And, on the other side of it, have you been to Germany recently? I don't know much about the higher ed. programmes in the UK, but recently German students were protesting and complaining because the government had to close off programmes similar to the one you propose. The reason they had to shut down their "go to school free as long as you like if you get good grades" programmes is that they were broke.
You also have to consider that America is a lot larger than Britain, and we have a significantly larger number of people who think they need to go to college to learn Visual Basic (ugh).
Finally, the taxes to fund this venture would, if I know my government, come from the middle class. The problem with this is that the middle class in America is very entrenched in the Uni system -- they have a lot of their money, and emotions, tied up in sending the kids to school. The middle class probably has the least to gain and the most to lose from free online Unis, but they will be the backbone of the funding for this project, if the government gets involved.
In short, the proposal you make is simply un-American.
The zombie-like corpses of Netware and OS/2 are rattling around on the network at this fortune 100 company.
And it sucks bigtime!
--Ender, Duke_of_URL
damn /. html strippers (with big b00bz!).
and DAMN /. for not allowing me to re-submit this with additions/corrections, claiming it was already posted.
The book "The Virtual Campus" published in 1998, author given as F X
Foulke-ffeinberg, answers many of the questions that have been raised
relative to Michael Saylor's donation and about the general concept of
an Internet-facilitated institution of higher education. The system
proposed by the author would have the following features:
1. Lessons would be distributed from a central data base
containing hundreds of different courses.
2. Lessons could be viewed at any time on home television sets
(with cable) or on home computers having Internet access, or
at small local viewing salons operated by for-profit investors.
3. For each lesson, viewers would pay a small fee calculated to
yield a reasonable profit to the entrepreneurs who set up and
operate the central data base systems.
4. Probably, students would have a choice of lecturers so they
could choose tapes made by teachers whose style is most
acceptable to them.
5. A certain number of lessons would constitute a "Course." The
student could view the lessons in any sequence, at any time,
and repeat lessons if necessary. The student would completely
control all aspects of the viewing, and could complete a course
in a day or in two years.
6. When the student believes he has mastered the course, he
will apply for a test at some central facility, which may not
be local. The test will be supervised and precautions taken so
that cheating does not occur. Tests can be taken repeatedly.
Any test can be taken by any student at any time, regardless of
the lesson-viewing history.
7. Successful completion of the test will be recorded in a
central database, and the student will be given a certificate,
if he wants one. With the student's permission, potential
employers will be able to view his educational history.
8. A student who has completed a certain group of classes
forming a course will be entitled to a "diploma" or "degree"
verifying this accomplishment.
With such a system in place, students will be relieved of the
geographical and time constraints imposed by brick-and-mortar campuses.
The cost of instruction will be greatly reduced, possibly to 10% of the
current cost. Everyone will have equal educational opportunities.
Differences in age, sex, appearance, physical abilities, pedigree, or
preferred depravity will not affect access to the educational system.
Affirmative action becomes meaningless, so far as educational
opportunities are concerned.
"These course should be for memorization/lecture intensive courses where direct classroom experience is of limited value. Many of the prerequisite 100/200 level course are of this sort."
Alternatively include a TA or learned person in the course subject to answer questions students have personally or through message boards where students can answer others questions as well. This would work pretty good for some graduate courses given an increased amount of collaboration.
"For lab work "
Lots of lab work and hands on stuff is really hard to do at a distance. I can't really think of too many current solutions - some engineering stuff should work well though..
"For exams - there are already computer based testing facilities located around the world. Likely a 'cost only' solution could be negotiated with these facilitys, this would reduce the likely hood of cheating."
Alternatively, you could elect a certain educational institution such as a local school, or someone the institution can trust (to an acceptable address) to recieve the test in the mail and sign for you completing a test and in given time. I was travelling all around the world and so I was doing book and lesson based learning for my high school education. This is how I did tests. Even with the far less time I had than normal students, I finished 4 years in 2.5. For chemistry, they send some lab materials at cost and I had to obtain certain materials for certain labs.
"Classes that are oral intensive can be done by having central meeting places that travel is required to for the occassional presentation."
I believe this is how many distance learning programs work. You meet 3+ times a semester to do oral intensive stuff as well as whatever group work is needed. Webcasts sounds good for those with broadband or even modems. You can include inline powerpoint presentations next to the webcast so they can actually see the screen if they have a shitty connect, and then have real time questions via the internet moderated by someone, or just skimmed by professor/ta depending on how large the meeting is.
"I've skiped some boring bits in the course I'm doing at the moment and now I'm a bit confused"
Being in a real class aint gonna help you there. Poor students will do poor regardless.
Of course, if you're talking about collaboration with ta/prof and other students, that kind of system can be done easily online.
Only when the stock is sold to buy cars, fund online universities, etc, do I get taxed on the capital gain.
I would take that a little further: people go to those schools because of the *connections*. I worked in a Wall Street firm for three years and I can assure you, it would surprise even the most cynical types out there to see how much economic power is in the hands of cliques who attended the small universe of so-called elite schools -- which are generally the ones that very few can afford. As for the on-line school, it wont provide any respectable credentials per se, but it has the potential to improve access to knowledge and, with a reasonable method of training, can take full advantage of the Internet Dream.
I am sure the "qualifications" will be set up in such a way that all of the qualifying applicants will be over 90% white. Flame me, but watch the results.
There are a couple of problems with this. A lot of the graduates with ``useful'' degrees run off to other countries (such as the US) where the pay is higher. Also, a lot of people take ``non-useful'' degrees since it's three years of expenses-paid living even if they don't get a decent job afterwards.
I still think it's a good thing, overall, but it's not perfect. Another possibility would be to tie government funded university education to military service. (Particularly for degrees which don't match the educational needs of the country. I mean, how many people with Media Studies degrees do we really need?)
-- a recent maths graduate who is now paying a lot of tax and student-loan repayments
Online education is full of problems. A certain level of interaction between the instructor and the student is required for teaching. Note, 'teaching' and not 'learning'. Most of us here are self-taught to a good extent, and much of our learning has been online - but not in a structured manner.
Well, I suppose so. There are ways around many of the problems, including the teacher/student interaction one. They may not be obvious at first glance.
For example, if the online university student could participate in "chat" sessions with an instructor, one could get around some of this problem. Applications like "NetMeeting" could be used. No, it's not a perfect solution, but we also should remember that Utopia is not an option.
As far as identity problems are concerned, it's quite possible that the university could engage in a contract with folks like Sylvan to conduct exams. Then the student would need to present positive ID, which would get around the "have somebody else take the test" problem. No, it's not perfect. Identities can be forged. But when I was in college, some students managed to sneak in other people to take exams for them -- and were never caught.
The fact that anyone CAN get the education will mean that the degree will be worthless. ...
I'm not certain I agree with this. "Just anybody" won't be able to get a technical degree, provided the right safeguards are available. Yes, there will need to be some form of knowing that Person X who took the coursework is Person X who took the tests, and without assistance. No, it's not impossible to do that. Merely somewhat difficult.
Free education is great, and the online distribution of it is the cheapest way to keep it free. Giving people the opportunity to learn, online, is wonderful, and beneficial to all. People with the desire to learn, and ANY available time (not 9 to 5 anymore) can improve their lot in life, and the lazy scumm can't just BUY a career.
This I agree with. This holds true no matter where your degree was obtained. Even engineers graduating from MIT or CalTech have to prove their worth. It is not just "accepted" that they have the ability to perform in the commercial setting. There are any number of engineers I've known from good universities who cannot perform the level of work expected by industry.
The only way to find out how good this kind of thing will be is to try it.
Think about it. What part of the country is still dedicated to the ideals of a strictly limited government, free enterprise, and traditional values? The South, Texas, the Bible Belt. These are the only places in the States which still really American in the best and most honorable sense of the word.
What do these places also have? The worst educational system in the developed world, bar none. There's no competition: They're on the bottom by a good fat margin, and they're determined to remain there at any cost. These places also have the lowest per-capita income and standard of living, in the United States -- thanks not only to a values-centered worldview but also to the absence of education.
If the average Alabamian knew basic arithmetic, s/he'd notice that the poor, put-upon citizens of Taxachussetts are paying five percent more taxes on twice as much income per-capita. And that would be a terrible thing, because they'd then be faced with a choice of either leaving Alabama, or dragging Alabama into the 20th century. Either course, if widely folllowed, would eat away dangerously at the foundations of American values.
That, of course, cannot be tolerated. Instead, we must bring New England, New York, and California up to the high values-based standards of the rest of the country. Right now, there are more colleges within fifty miles of Boston (96) than there are in the entire area once known as the Confederacy (78). This is why Taxachussetts has gone so tragically off-course in their values. This is why corruption exists in the North.
We can help them, but only if we put a stop to the madness -- and stop education in its tracks.
From the University of Utah's "In Fact 2000" booklet for Budget Year-end 1998-99:
Total Annual Revenue: $1.127 billion
Tuition and Student Fees: $71.3 million (6.3%)
State Appropriations: $184.8 million (16.4%)
Where does the real money come from?
Grants, Gifts (over 19,000 donors), and Other
Oh ya. And the hospital (28.5%). So how does an online university set up a hospital?
I think the "what about the rest?" comment was meant as a gentle reminder to Rob, and ESR, and all the "Linux Millionaires." They should each pony up $100,000 to give to an orphanage, or a nursery school somewhere.
And don't give it to some self-serving group like the FSF or an Open Source Hype-Mill. The lawyers and pundits already have enough money.
The one advantage that an Ivy League or other elite universities ,e.g. Stanford, Chicago, etc. offer over other schools is not the quality of instruction, or lab experiences, all of that can be had at any decent state university, it's the social connections that can be made at such institutions. The very exclusivity of such schools confers a huge advantage. They remain the places where the children of the elite, and the supremely ambitious, go to meet.
Billionaires are only able to amass such fortunes by abusing the inequities created by a capitalist (not democratic) society. If a government is more concerned with guarding property rights than those of the individual, the super rich are created. He earned his fortune to the same extent that the monarchy has.
Odd that your survey included OS/2, but not Netware, which is still very much alive at the Fortune 100 company I work for.
An online college will miss out on a lot of things. People using this online college as their only form of higher education will miss out on a lot of things. Parties, those nights you just can't remember due to obscene alcohol comsumption, and most importantly women. The main reason for college is, despite common belief, is to get a girl. Now most of us are nerds, but the goals of college remain the same, how will you get a girl through an online college?
The very cool thing about this is that it creates the best-of-the-best courses, and all manner of specialisations. The problem with your local, or any, university is that if you want to specialise in 'cache control issues applied to biological rna computing clusters', you'd not find the right expertise. With online university, hopefully you could take all the right classes and design an appropriate curriculm.
Even more than this, it goes way beyond being a university, to being professional training courses and the likewise. The good thing is that hopefully highly qualified and respected people can work on providing the knowledge, so it'll be much better than your 'up the road university'.
Eventually, I want to see the specialised courses packaged with an accelerated cerebral learning product, then I can download a course and stick it into my brain with a memoryStick.
As for the life issues, well, it doesn't mean you can't have them, and in any case, you may still want to go to a local university, but now the professors may draw their information from the online material, and help you interpret it or navigate around it, and do the assignments/etc.
Coolness!
msg
You're post is offensive. Do you have some rational behind it or is it just random BS?
What kind of qualifications would you put in place if you were in charge?
Would a Nobel Prize or a Turing Award be OK?
I think you might be missing the global significance of this. Sure his idea might not be better than regular college in every way but potentially it will make available to *anyone with a computer* the best educational materials money can buy.
Don't you see the importance of this? Can you imagine the number of extremely talented people that just don't make it to a good college because they don't have money/they don't have time/their country sucks/they are just too smart?
This could be huge IMHO and it is a genuinely good gesture. Kudos for the guy.
>Granted for some courses with heavy lab requirements (Chemistry, >Physics) you may still need to >physically attend school, but if we ever get some really good >experiment simulation software, that may be >able to be done from home too. I have yet so see a simulation that could claim to replace lab experience. Students are required to perform experiments in the lab not because the experiments would give interesting results but because they have to learn to deal with real (non-ideal) lab equipment. Put someone with "simulation experience" in a lab, and s/he will be clueless. Usually, the tricky part is to get the instrumentation to work in a meaningful way and to distinguish instrumentation artefacts from real data.
There are several factors that many are just not considering. The first is the fact that even though the university is free, it my not be easy to get into the program. Some may say that a hacker could just add him/herself to the list. However, I would wager that the Free University system would operate off of mail order and some local connections. So yeah, you could hack your way in, but the chances of getting caught are very high. So the hacker superiority question is out. Free does not mean anyone can go. Hell, if you look at it there are many people that DO go to college for free. They are the people who can get grants and scholarships. So lets say that if you can pass the entrance exam, you are in. Now we have the situation of professors. Will one professor grade all the sociology exams? No. He will have a class. No more than thirty that can access the real audio lecture and the graphic if they are necessary. A forum for discussion can be set up in the form of a chat. But you are taking science classes. You need a lab. Okay. Here's where it gets hard and pricey. But we have to think. There are still admission standards in our model. Also, think about the numbers of people that are attending. Most Ivy League schools have only about 5000 undergrads. Divid this among the major cities of just the english speaking world and you have about 100 people per city. Allow for classes taught in different languages, different disciplines, and different needs, and you only need space in each city about the size of a 2 bedroom apartment to allow for a meeting place to conduct labs. This is much cheaper than the colossal buildings that "real world" universities use and is actually feasable. Make the professors of good quality, pump up the admission requirements, get a big enough endowment, apply cryptography so those that were not admitted can sneak into classes.* And Tada! you have a first rate institution. Many schools will tell you that college is not for everyone, and I think this school will be the same. *Classes at major institutions are very open to visitors. Show up at a lit class or a history class and you can blend right in and in a way get a free education, to a certain point. Eventually the classes will get small enough to where you will be noticed. Also, you wont be able to turn in homework. But it can get you a decent education if you do not care about the piece of paper. But as Will said in that movie "you're paying thousands of dollars for an education that you can get for 5.78 in library fines."
'Nuff said.
2) Isn't that the version that comes with the inflatable, Ivy league, latex party doll with the realistic hair and free trail-size bottle of lube?
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
Nah, you're just an A-HOLE
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
Bruhahahah. Hahahaha. Haahahaha. Hahahahhahaha.
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
If money were the only requirement to good education, we'd have a bunch of damned smart kids. Near me is a town of 6000 people. There is a public school, grades 4th to 8th. This school received about $200,000 from the government. To teach them something worthwhile, you may ask? Nope. It was a grant to combat that evil menace, bullies. You see, it seems too many kids are unhappy, the worst of this nations evils. This is the sort of government we have in the US. Is it no wonder we come last in all those education comparison studies worldwide? For some of the nation's youth, learning things isn't how they expect to make it to college, but by sports. I know this kid that was recruited when he hadn't finished high school to play hockey in a Canadian university. Sports are nice, but should it become their career at age 16?
But it's a good thing there is the National Education Association, to protect our kids from evil Republicans wanting them to learn something, or even worse, expect teachers to teach something. Money is being sent to schools nationwide, and it all goes to the dozens of levels of administration. Increasing the amounts being given to schools from people's paychecks will only line the administrations with more employees. It's time for good ol' fashioned capitalism to kick in. It's about time parents were able to decide where to send their children.
That said, many of the problems are about supplies. I'm talking about the run-down schools with out-of-date materials. Institutions where school pride is a foreign concept. Placing the blame entirely on unions is, I think, a cop-out. The problems run much deeper than that. Teacher's strikes are an indication of poor working conditions, lack of pride in the workplace and destructive arguments rather than constructive discussions.
Why don't we make school fun again? Let's improve our facilities so teachers enjoy their work! If teachers are in a workplace of which they are proud to be a part, I think you'll see these sorts of problems go away.
--
In any event, I don't think much experimentation is required. Resources are required. Let's fill our poor school libraries with books and magazines. Let's improve the facilities by making much-needed repairs and expansions. Let's hire more teachers to reduce class size and provide more individual attention. It's not rocket science.
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Where are most of the world's population going to get internet access? Sure, the country might provide publicly-accessible terminals if there weren't more pressing needs such as feeding the populace. Unfortunately, the people that could benefit the most from on-line education are exactly those who can't make use of it.
Perhaps the money could be used to improve the infrastructures of developing nations. Building roads goes a long way.
--
I developed leadership abilities in various clubs and organizations. I was able to make use of various skills in these same organizations. -- skills that I treasure every day and provide an escape from my regular work.
Call me a bleeding-heart Liberal-Arts sympathizer if you want to. I'll take the compliment
--
Right now there is a critical shortage of tech. workers. Why can't we provide quality education and fill this need? The jobs are there. We just need to create the skills.
As for the minimum-wage jobs, wages might just go up if more people can get a quality education and find more lucrative employment. We're already seeing a shortage of store clerks, etc. due to the booming economy.
--
Excellent point. There's a lot of subjects that I'd love to know more about but never got the chance to take the classes in college. Lately, I've been buying audio tapes from the Teaching Company on all kinds of subjects including Philosophy, Psychology, Economics, etc. It's somewhat expensive but I love the material. If this kind of stuff were available online, I'd be a total addict.
Like it or not, it's coming.
Like every other change, it's got good points and bad. The benefits of personal interaction will clearly be missing, but the benefits of better accessibility will make online education unstoppable.
Instead of complaining about imagined shortcomings, let's focus on maximizing the benefits and minimizing the negative aspects.
He probably meant something like Universities will lose control of the dispensing of knowledge.
Interesting point. Perhaps higher education was chosen because it's easier and doesn't create conflicts with the giant behemoth that is the US public education system(s).
Who's to say that the idea won't expand to cover primary and secondary education later. It certainly would be a tremendous boost to those parents who are attempting home schooling.
Finally, the target audience for this idea is "the world" and if, as I suspect, the program is initially set up in English, then there is less of a language barrier for adults.
Still, it's an interesting point.
First, $100 million is actually not that much when you realize that the total amount of money spent on primary and secondary education in the US is around $300 billion.
Second, while more money will probably help some, a restructuring of the system would probably do far more than could be done with merely more money. The current system has outcomes typical of any huge, centrally planned bureaucracy. Even school buildings look like they are the result of some failed socialist experiment.
Yes!
And do the same for the students. The biggest crime committed by the current system is that schools teach children that learning is hell. This is contrary to human nature. And it's a disaster for the kids and society.
Did/Do you love going to school? Did/Do you look forward to constantly learning new ideas and facts? Why not?
My understanding of ecomonics says the opposite. More education == higher productivity. Besides, low skill jobs are being replaced with mechanization. With more education, people on the lower rungs of the workforce have a way to climb up to better paying jobs. Without it, they will eventually be replaced.
It has been said that the idea of money changing people has always been a myth. That what changes when you have money is how many of your own wishes you can fulfill.
In other words a jackass with a few billion is still a jackass and cool geak is still a cool geak. Most people have no desire to actually spend a billion dollars on themselves. Most billionaires think of it as taking care of some "basic stuff" like securing the future of the grand kids to the 5th generation or so with "safe" investments. A few homes and some cars, maybe a jet.
After that you look back and you still haven't cracked the Billion Dollar mark yet. That levees you with some money you could literally give away. However most of the current crop of Billionaires grew up with a distaste for the old stile charities. Some won't even give to the Red Cross.
So you have the same creativity that got them all wealthy in the 1st place being brought to beer on the problem. This is why Bill has a building named after him at an Ivy League school. He also sponsors more scholarships than anyone keeps track of. Including one on African History.
This goy is being a little more creative than most. He is thinking: What future is there for the young person who after high school can hold a job but has no way of affording university ? Sure in the US it may not be that tough but there are other countries where the best jobs you can land on a high school education pay a fraction of the tuition for university. A classic catch 22 that leaves only the wealthy and the few scholarship winners getting farther education.
An online university, once it's up and running will cost a lot to keep going. Especially in the area of content creation. The upside of this is that it can be "affiliated" with other brick and mortar school so a lecture presented at Princeton can be available in MP3 at the site. That will still cost money but not nearly as much as paying these professors to deliver the lecture to a camera and mike alone.
The really tough part will be the books. Most new books, in fact everything written for the past 80 years is still copyrighted. A few works out of that are available online. This school may be in a position to negotiate with those professors who still own the copyrights.
All in all a very smooth move.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Computers and the web in general have have had surprisingly little impact on access to higher education. The idea of publishing free high quality curricula on the web is a step in the right direction, and is very much in the spirit of the free software movement. At my alma mater, Cornell Univerity, the university seal reads, "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." I guess the can now be modified to read, "I would start a web site were any person can download curricula for any study."
1) You would not like the results. Really! All kinds of people that don't have university degrees today would be getting them. Oh the horror. What it really means is that a scarce resource is no scarce, and the gatekeepers of that resource are irrelevant.
2) There would be no sense of community. Nevermind the built-in irony of bruiting that argument on /., one must ask: "What Internet do these guys use?" It is a natural extension of the success of online community that an online university should be tried.
3) That online education "would be of little worth." Subtext: Online education would change the business model of brick-and-ivy education in ways that might be uncomfortable.
All this is very similar to what entrenched interests in other fields that are being cracked open by the Internet say: You won't like it, you'll feel wierd about it, and it takes food out of our mouths. In all other instances these arguments have amounted to nothing of substance. I think education will be very different for my childeren than it was for me. Hopefully, instead of tution, they will have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest either in their own businesses or for savings. That economic change alone could put our so-called "new economy" in the shade of what will be.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I don't think this plan could possibly be successful. I think good use of $100 million for education would be scholarships for poor kids.
Their qualifications are well-respected, and their audio, video andprinted course material is top quality, but it is not a cheap thing to do. Firstly the production costs of good material are high -- they employ top lecturers and professional TV production crews and a much higher level of display equipment and technical support than you'd see in a "face-to-face" lecture, and the course material has to be revised every 5-10 years depending on subject -- if nothing else, the lecturer's clothes and hair styles start to look rather laughable.
They also employ tutors all over the country to run face-to-face small group tutorials (I think most students get about 2 per month) or, where people are very scattered, audio, video or internet chat conferences.
You can make distance learning work really well, and the internet helps a little, but it is not dramatically less work, or cheaper, than a conventional university.
i think part of the issue here is a fundamental break away from traditional styles of teaching and learning. An online university does not necessarily have to be governed by normal rules such as testing procedures, or more importantly whether there are tests. Unless they want 100 million dollars down the tube, they will find a way to circumvent cheating, be it through new and interesting ways, some fancy footwork in server scripts, good old essay tests, or maybe even chatting with the professor. The point is the field is wide open and very exciting.
One thing to remember about the ultra rich is that they don't always have a lot of cash sitting around. Even an evil bastard such as Bill Gates doesn't keep $5B stuffed under his mattress. It's tied up in company stock. If he gives away that stock, he looses control of the company.
Yes, there are tax writeoffs, but at that level of wealth I doubt they make too much difference. This is more than likely someone who is approaching the end of their career and no longer needs to have so much wealth. Back to Bill Gates again, he has stated that he has no intention of leaving more than a few hundred million to his kids. That means that Bill could end up being the biggest philanthropist in history as he gives away $100B+ over the next twenty or thirty years.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Probably will work OK for people interested in
picking up job skills, whether as a first
degree or continuing education.
For the minority interested in a learning community,
you'd still "goto school".
Much of "attending school" is socialization
in the classroom and outside the classroom.
As the technology improves you could probably
replace large lectures by quality videos,
and recitation sections by interactive video
chat rooms.
However a large component of many jobs is
interacting with other people. Would the
lost socialization harm this? Schools now dont
always teach the teamwork used in business,
even the software business.
This was a point I meant to make but didn't.
The online Universities, since they are by definition 'non-traditional' will not be able to offer "meaningful" degrees... There is a game involved in University education.
"Ah... so you graduated from Yale, eh?" means that you went through the process of 'ball-licking', and the frat-parties, and got the 'rounded education' that so often breaks a perfectly good 'in major' GPA.
The requirements that make us jump through hoops seem to somehow prove to employers that we're well rounded, and able to juggle conflicting responsibilities and such. Whatever all that means.
An online VR. U. that lets students choose their courses for a sum of credits, without requiring the English Lit and soft-science and history that, frankly, doesn't interest us much, will never be seen as anything other than a self-study course set, or a trade school.
They won't have the prestige of CMU, MIT, RPI or any other respected tech school, because they will not subject their students to the same rigors - both in terms of 'rouded' curricula AND the IRL politics that we have to play with professors and administrator.
Now, for the record, I believe in the value of a 'rounded' education. Hybrid knowledge is a good thing, and it makes for an interesting experience. But, having done it both ways, I can see the University process as a huge racket as well.
As for suggestions, I have two:
1. Smaller state schools tend to be more flexible than larger ones. My experience with CCSU is better than with UCONN. Better schedule, more aligned to the commuter population that also works for a living... The smaller schools are also a bit cheaper, and the professors are more sensitive to the fact that non-traditional students have lives. I've had the good fortune of classes that started as late as 8:00PM. The bulk of the CS curriculum was offered after 5pm. The down-side, well, it's not as good an education; more superficial - you have to supplement it yourself - and with work and kids and such, it's hard.
2. RPI is pushing real hard to be the premiere Distance Education University in the country. Large employers may be able to set up a conference room to allow tele-commuting to the Troy campus. I'm taking an experimental online class from home, via the net. This is a trend, and it will continue. Surf over to RPI.edu and see what you can find. Caveat, prestige co$t$. See if your employer might reimburse you via an educational assistance program.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
1) University tuitions are getting really crazy. Most grads I know spend years paying back student loans, and not everyone has a rich daddy to send them off to school. I've always been one for hard work, and earning an education, but it's just getting silly.
/. practice what they preach. Just because I pay thousands of dollars for my degree doesn't mean that my _knowledge_ was harder earned than someone else's.
Knowledge is free. Or should be, if the people who frequent
Although people take more seriously something they pay money for, University tuitions are beginning to put education beyond the reach of many.
2) For those of you whining about the script kiddies getting their fraudulent degrees, it already happens. I quite regularly get spam email claiming that all I have to do is pay a small fee and call an 800 number, and the degree of my choice will be mailed right to my door. Of course, they assure, this is ligitimate because it is based on "life experience." Yeah.
There are plenty of legitimate University grads that don't deserve the degrees they get. There is already cheating and other devious means of getting ahead. But there are people who don't cheat that go to school too. Can we assume that honest people would also benefit from an online education?
Sure there are definite pros to physically attending school. The whole social interaction and all that. I, for one, learn quite a bit from the web.
How about it Bill? Saylor isn't worth 1/2 of you!
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
I see a lot of comments about "college is more than a web page" and "what about hackers". Let's give these people a little credit--with $100 million you can do more than:
/home/httpd/html/index.html
rpm -i apache.rpm
cat encyclopedia_brittanica >
First of all, there's no reason you can't interact with other students at U of Web--after all, what are we doing right here? Second, a suspected hacker could be easily retested and regraded. And these solutions are just off the top of my head--I'm sure they've got people who are dedicated to the task of figuring this out.
In other words, let's wait until they prove themselves boneheaded before shouting "I told you so".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
This sounds a lot more like an online library than a "university" to me. In the article they suggest that professors would videotape their lectures in studios that the charity would set up, then they would presumably be available online for everyone. The article says his original thought on the matter was to address the question why someone in a remote location can't have access to a high quality education. As the announcement reads, it sounds like the goal of this is not to provide credentials to people, but instead access to knowledge.
Someone above suggested that this would bring about a new paradigm in education and I believe they are only partially correct. The history of the world and the US is full of self-educated people (eg Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln). The problem is that as access to knowledge becomes more a privelege of the economic elite (checked the price of an academic journal or textbook lately?) it is becoming increasingly difficult to be self educated.
I think Mr. Saylor's idea is a wonderful one. If such an online repository of knowledge becomes available I believe that people will begin to focus more on the capabilites of potential employees then their credentials. It will also decrease the barriers to learning that exist today.
I think a lot of these comments are U.S.-centric.
In other countries, education is a different
animal. "Hacking an education" may be an
issue, but if you're dealing with a flawed
educational system, it may be irrelevant.
If anyone has read of Dr Feynman's experiences
with Brazil in "Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman", you understand what I mean.
I took a language course in Mexico once, and a
requirement to start the course was to go to the
copy service and have them make a copy of the
text for the course. People in the U.S. take
access to textbooks for granted I think.
(of course, internet access can be taken for
granted too...)
Now, imagine that you're learning in a "less
than optimal" environment. Maybe it's even a
country that provides a free college education.
Your teacher reads out of the book and assigns
homework. You get home, but are confused when
trying to do it. However, you pull up a lecture
off the internet on the subject and one of the
best professors in the field explains things to
you while carefully skirting the cognitive
stumbling blocks.
What if college teachers themselves in other
countries can learn their subject better online?
I don't know, I think a lot of good can come
of this.
If he would support the creation of open/free text books and instructional software that would be wonderful. I've been planning to start a project along those lines for some time now.
I wonder if we can get a Slashdot interview with him?
LetterRip
fstmm@yahoo.com
It's unfortunate that you are posting as an AC, I'd be interested in continuing the conversation, please feel free to email me
LetterRip
Tom M.
fstmm@yahoo.com
Ewing's wife is getting a PhD in Marxist theory. One way to return money to the community, I guess :-)
I'm a dartmouth student in the CS department here, and I can tell you first hand that not all Ivy schools are mediocre undergrad institutions. Dartmouth's main focus is, and always has been, undergrad educuation: graduate students here are an extreme minority, and not even present in all disciplines. Undergrad's regularly have chances for research with professors, and take classes from full professors (not just grad TA's), even starting as freshmen. It's even reflected in the name of the school: "Dartmouth College", not "Dartmouth University".
"The horse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum does not vary."
I feel like there's a bias sometimes on slashdot, towards a computer proficiency only useful in the computer industry. To that end, perhaps a completely-online university would have a place...
However, the meaning of "university" has always been (in my mind) tied up with the idea of research, and professor-graduate student associations that teach people how to do research, how to be part of academia (in the best sense of the word). This is the thing that would be lacking in an online institution. Academic research is an exercise that must be conducted in person; learning to be a researcher can't happen when you only know your professor through email and "streaming video". Research is a culture that grows in the daily interactions of a student and a teacher... and when it does occur, it produces ideas that often motivate or create entire industries (see the effect of Computer Science research on the "Computer Industry" for proof).
"The horse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum does not vary."
that being said, though, i think the idea is a wonderful one. i take a lot of pride in my school. i know i went to a good one, and i know i busted my ass to get in and to pay for it.
i also know that not everyone has those options.
the Internet brought us unlimited knowledge. i see a free, online university as bringing some structure to that knowledge and acting as a resource for people who are not at university for some reason or another.
can't afford school? working too hard and don't have the time? just not able to make the committment? fine! go online and read up on 13th century artwork! read about the finer points of freidrich hayek's work in political philosophy!
provided that this doesn't take the place of an accredited university (and i don't think it would), i think it's a wonderful idea!
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
Of course, I'm a cynic to start. I won't say its unworkable, certainly, but I still see this sort of thing more as a supplement to education than a self-contained university experience.
Reading the article helped allay one of my concerns - the lack of people on the other end. According to the article, he wants to hire lecturers and guest lecturers to be videotaped and then offer the video online. Of course, that's still no better than watching a lecture on TV, because there's no Q&A session.
An online university would be great for the kinds of subjects that are taught via lecture and reading. I think it would start to fall apart in the discussion and tutoring areas. For something like this, I would want to see moderated chatroom "sections" for each lecture at the very least. It costs in terms of teacher-hours (or more likely TA-hours) and loses some of the flexibility of unscheduled learning, but most people learn better by interaction.
I don't see the big expense for an online university being the web pages, the online books, the quizzes, or even the lecturers. To work - there need to people there. A live, thinking person has to answer questions, correct exams (multiple blind-stab-in-the-dark tests have only limited educational use, and correcting anything more sophisticated requires an actual brain), lead discussions, and so on.
I did take part in some experiements with online learning back in the mid 80's (yes, that long ago). In the course I took (a soft science no less - it was Intro to Sociology) I was physically present three times - for orientation, the midterm, and the final. Interim quizzes were done by timed email. As far as it went, it was a good experience for me. One of the big problems was that I see continuing with the free online unversity is that people tended to blow off homework and deadlines because the class didn't feel "real". There was no peer pressure to perform. I would guess that the "free" aspect would aggravate that problem. The second most reported problem was that a lot of the other students in the experiment felt isolated by the remote learning. The second time they ran the experiement, they added a TA who was available for face-to-face at certain hours and that did seem to help.
Books can provide static information, and TV can provide taped lectures -- the thing this university can provide that would be really new is remote interaction with actual people.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
Yes it is true, online universities are a new concept. And like all new concepts, people initially have a difficult time seeing the merit of it.
Even right now, universities struggle to give weight to the degrees they hand out. This is the reason for all the competition involved in getting high rankings in some national magazine. Online universities are no different in this regard.
Of course online universities can't ignore the problems posed by being online. They will look at existing models such as sysadmin certification, where the tests are administered in the regular world, with pen, paper, and proctors, regardless of how the person studied.
This is always the perfect answer to anything that's late. Teacher's don't know what to do, and BOOM! you've got a free weekend to actually do it. They never even have to know I use Linux. So far though, this is the only good thing ("innovation") I've seen come out of any Microsoft OS/Office product.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Several colleges already offer an option to take virtual university courses. The benefit of this new "Online College" would be to tie it in strongly to other universities, transfer-credit-wise. Then one could take the hands on courses like Chemistry and Physics that require labs at the local University, while the bulk of the courses fro Comp Sci., English, etc. could be taken online. While it's not quite "free-as-air-and-water" it'd be a real boon for people like me who have already taken some courses and wish to have the convenience of online classes.
On another note, this would be great for those less fortunate people who wish to get a college education but can't afford it or schedule it in because of many jos, etc. They could set up centers in local libraries for this sort of thing, with a cluster of inexpensive computers (Linux, anyone?) and a place to study. Then both the computers and the books would be covered.
Just remember that outside of the digital world:
Utility is the basis of value.
Scarcity is measure of value.
Price is the evidence of value.
--
Adam
Crimson Networks
In the UK for the last thirty years or thereabouts we have had a TV based university. (the Open University.) No employer thinks that it's students have a lesser degree because they have spent time away from the confines of a traditional campus. In fact because they generally manage to hold down a full time job and manage to spend 20 hours per week on university based work they are seen as more hard working and better prepared than the average student.
check them out at http://www.open.ac.uk/
I wonder if we could get him to do one....
there'd be all sorts of interesting questions I'd be dying to ask him. Would it conduct research? What approach to intellectual property would it take?
Electronic teaching is one of the biggest cans of worms you could ever imagine (I sat on a couple of university IT committees....)
Fixing copyright
It's a fabulous idea, but there is one issue I have. Many people (myself included) learn much better in a classroom than just reading the material for themselves. Wouldn't the online thing hurt those kind of students?
...isotropic - the same in all rainforests...
What I am hoping to see in the long run is that the advent of online universities will help check the skyrocketing prices of tuition at standard universities. I think that online universites and standard universities can work together, not one replacing the other.
What has free internet scholarship to do with Poison Ivy ? BatMan University ? I want my Mr. Freeze degree ... ^_^
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I've been tossing the idea around about going back to college for a BA in Philosophy. I too, think an online college will be acceptable for this type of degree.
Are there alot of these online colleges? Are any other slashdotters enrolled in one? If you guys know of some, please post some links.
A college education is sure to deliver at least two things... 1) knowledge 2) discipline. College requires discipline, and employers consider that when they look for potential employees. It is much harder to drag yourself to class on a Friday morning after a rough Thursday night than simply crawling to the computer for a day at the keyboard. Attending a real, concrete university ensures discipline, physical interation, and real-life social skills. A "virtual university" will forver be just that... "virtual", it will never be equal to concrete, flesh and blood institutions.
In the worst cases, web-based courses are just books: "here, read these pages, then take a test." They may be worse than books, since the standards of publishing on the web are much lower than they are in print.
I do teach at a university, and I'm still struggling to figure out how to do a good job. One of the important things, I think, is to force students to do something in class -- not simply listen passively to what I say. Another important thing is for me to listen carefully to student questions, answer them -- and figure out how to present the material more clearly next time.
It may be possible for a professor to interact in similar ways with students over a bulletin-board; but not if the class contains 300 or 500 students. We can't put up web pages and then expect to serve triple the number of students we serve in a regular course.
Oh, and while web-based courses may make sense for some of the introductory courses, I agree with many posters that upper-level classes and graduate courses should be taught in person. In those classes, the primary mode of learning is by asking questions -- really detailed questions -- and having discussions. Face-to-face is much better for that sort of in-depth interaction than E-mail.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
I did go and read it, and I have the same opinion.
I see the benefits of it, having all that information accessible, however, it is still unable to offer what human interaction offers, not only in discussions, but also in lab environments.
So whilw it will be good for some things, and many courses will probably be fine, assuming they professor isn't just taped as the article says, but it avalible for feedback and such (a bit overwhelming with 100million students) it will still be at a disadvantage over those "ivy league" schools that have exceptional facilities for students to learn hands on. Coming from MIT of all places he should know research is a very important part of a modern science/engineering education.
As a current first time college student, I know that many of the most important aspects of the college experience are not related to academics and the classroom, but to social networking and experiences. Therefore, I don't think that an online university would be adequate to serve the needs of a student just out of high school who had never been to college before, and didn't have the social network that older adults have.
However, I do think that an online approach to university education could offer a lot of flexibility to older adults who want either to get a college degree for the first time, or want to continue their education. Given the difficulties in sheduling around their primary workday responsibilities, attending classes at a physical university may be very difficult. A high quality online university that was structured around allowing students flexibility in taking classes might do a lot to help such students. Further, because older adults have established social networks through other means, the social elements of the physical college experience might not be as vital.
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
If it's tied in with demanding merit-based pay for teachers -- and hiring more qualified ones in the first place -- sure.
As somebody whose state has been the national leader in teacher's strikes for quite some time, many of the disputes are *not* about supplies, but over issues like merit pay, charter schools (competition! gasp!), and work hours (how many periods they teach a day).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Just think what all this money would do if it was used as a scholarship fund...
I'm a bit skeptical about the awarding of degrees as well. But it seems like, since it's all online, you could just take from it what you need to. Like I might follow watch the Knuth (for example :) lectures on computer programming, follow a sequence on database theory. If you took a bit at a time, a reasonable option for a busy IT worker, I think you could fit it into your schedule at a minimal cost.
Of course, you'll probably have to download and register the latest-greatest RealPlayer to watch the online videos, and get a new 700 MHz Athlon and 512M of ram to get the thing to run correctly... nevermind, that could get expensive...
However, I think what he's doing is conceptually different. One of the points they raise in the article is that "there's no reason that someone in a Columbian jungle couldn't get a high quality education on the web." This aims at reducing the education/money gap AROUND THE WORLD -- which is another huge problem. What if there was another group of philanthropists who were willing to set up "remote campuses" around the world, and train some local folks to maintain them? Then a labful of people at a time in thousands of disadvantaged places could all benefit from this, at a relatively low cost.
Improving the primary education in the USA would level the economic playing field here. Giving away high quality university education has the potential to level it across the world. Both are valid; just different.
Man oh man. For some reason, this just struck me as a really good idea. In a real lecture hall, the prof gives a talk and then takes maybe 10 questions from the audience, selected who-knows-why, maybe randomly, maybe because the girl/guy in the third row is cute... have you ever been really frustrated because a prof answered some stupid question instead of yours?
This is where moderation could come in handy. They show the video lecture, the lecturer agrees to either come to a studio or sit at a remote terminal. During the time she/he is there, the lecture is played, questions are taken on a moderated IRC channel, the moderators take the *most popular questions* and the most insightful ones, and have the lecturer answer those, like in a slashdot interview.
Then, the prof's time in "lecture" (actually, only a Q&A session) is well spent, and the most popular questions are answered, as well as the most interesting, expansive ones. Wow! That would be so cool! Moderation of lecture questions and comments. I wish we could do that at my college.
p.s. sorry if this posts twice; it said "unknown error" the first time.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This is kind of like the difficulty of attaining utopia; it's extremely difficult, because nobody's yet made a perfect human being to live in it.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
There would probably be an initial expense at setting up the course. Once you had the course well established, it would probably be possible to recycle a lot of the content every year. You'd have to change the exams of course, but the basic lecture would remain the same. If you were smart you could even store a database per lecture on questions asked and answered so that confusing areas would have excellent documentation.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
One way to make education better is to use the benefit of the Internet. That is, getting a bunch of people together who would not otherwise be able to do so. In the same way that the Internet has enabled bright people leaving far away from each other collaborating on the same project, an on-line university would make it possible to get together the best teachers and the right set of students. It would definitely be nice.
I can't remember the specifics, but Carey College has their lesson plans available at their site.
I find it's really nice that this guy donates his money to a free university. What kind of technoglogy are they going to use?
Good point, I was just thinking of Computer Science, but even there we really need someone to back real software engineering for corporations to rebut the socialist Open Source chaos development model (maybe I've just overlooked the requirements, specification, etc documents for Linux)
;)
Esperandi
And we don't really need multiple philosophy professors, just one type - mine.
Sure, tel yourself I'm joking, but I really am that sure of my philosophy.
That sounds interesting! One major question though: what are the controls to prevent cheating (ie bringing in someone to post on your behalf)?
It seems to me that it wouldn't be such a big deal for an "interest-related" degree such as Religious Studies, compared with a "job-related" degree, which might involve more cheating.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Recently I took a course with one of the founders of computer graphics, Professor Don Greenburg. This is a man who was doing pixel based computer graphics before computer monitors had pixels. And two Scientific American *covers*. He's now actively pushing Cornell to create an online University. His opinion is that the changes yet to come, once everyone figures out how to use this technology, are going to be larger than expected, sooner than expected. To illustrate that point, he showed a 4 or 5 year old SGI machine that cost a quarter million and a $4000 dye sub printer next to each other. In the same room he had a PC running one of the newest accelerators and an inkjet. Both could keep up with their more expensive counterpart. The point being that the things that are happening in the labs right now with regard to video technology and teaching technology will be available to the general public at some point.
Currently the largest university in this country is the U. of Phoenix. It's online! According to the Prof. this is just the begining. What you have to do is not look at the technological limitations of the web today, but rather look 10 years or 20 years in the future. An online university will not replace the Ivies overnight. But the cost of a B&M education is getting to be more and more and more. The government won't support such increases. What is gained by being at a B&M school?
Social interaction
With 10 million or even 1 million people in a class, most large cities could hold discussion groups for the course. Video conferencing will be better in 20 years, and so maybe classroom like social interaction will be possible.
Research
There are only about 50-60 schools that can really be considered research institutions. A number more may have smaller research programs. This means that there are approximately 5 billion people on this planet will will not attend a research university. Don't worry, new ways will be found for people to earn PhDs and such. Already half the PhD candidates I know are already supported by business. Perhaps some sort of non profit think tank could be created to do basic research.
Cheating
First of all cheating goes on at B&M universities all of the time. In a computerized course with a whole lot of people you can bet there will be cheating too. But never underestimate the ingenuity of people who are creating the new digital universities. I've personally always thought grades are stupid (I'm TAing a class and it kills me to have to give anyone a grade). So maybe the best thing to do would be to get rid of grades. I can think of a number of ways to do evaluation in a computer based course, probably better than what is used now. The simplest of which would be software that activly helps students through problems as they are working through them.
The benefits of an online school could be tremendous. I'd love to trade in some of my lectures for ones taught by the best in a given field. There also exists a potential for lifetime learning. I'm sure half of what I've learned in the last 6 years will be obsolete by the time I graduate in 3. Better to be able to take a course anytime it is needed, as opposed to at the age of 18.
Of course there will be problems, but this means opportunities for us! How do you give anyone any sort of individual attention? Grading (as mentioned before)? Money? Copyright? Degree? Advising?
Anyway, I feel that this is a very exciting development; one of the things that this time will be remembered for creating. I just want to find out how I can get involved.
IANAL (but I've seen one on TV)
I think the original poster's point was that there are many needs which could be met by $100M even _without_ any innovative changes to the educational system. For example, that money could pad teachers' salaries and provide new textbooks and facilities in districts which can't afford these things. Existing initiatives, though they may not be perfect, could benefit greatly from more funding.
...i still see a couple problems with some courses that i don't think could be implemented very well, if at all.
:(
:)
any lab class would definitely fit into this category, particularly physics and chem. simply put, where are you going to do the labs? you can't just skip the labs, as i'm pretty sure they're a requirement for accreditation; one of the things these classes teach you is doing work with others, and that'd be a bit difficult to do when ppl are as remotely seperated as tends to happen on the net.
foreign language would be the another problem; it'd be difficult to learn how to pronounce a dialect correctly without anyone to correct you, and without a face-to-face speaking partner it's really hard to learn speech. i took two years of korean in a millitary school, and have now lived in korea for nine months, and i still suck, along with everyone i came here with
still another problem would be art: where are you going to send in your work to be graded?
on a lighter note, i don't think you could expect much from an all-online university's football team
all in all, i can see this complementing existing universities, but i don't see how it could replace what's already there. still, it's nice to see people using their money for the public good rather than the usual depressing news stories of kids killing kids or abba singers coming back from the dead to go on solo careers.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
In a world where all the information you need is just a click away, what's the point of education? Why download that info into local storage, ie your already overloaded brain? Just leave it where it is and only access it on demand. The availability of online universities in a way makes obtaining a degree from them redundant.
Somewhat suprising how many critical comments this is getting. I thought the one thing the Slashdot community would support was Open Course.... ^_^
Sounds like a good idea, though. I know I have a lot of computer knowledge that could easily translate into a college degree with minimal effort if it was free like this...
In any case, a nice gesture, a nice idea, and I will be following how it pans out...
--Arcum
Maybe a little less up-front charge and we'd sign up...and a free online university wouldn't be needed as a tax writeoff.
Oh the other hand, the last time I checked, that's more than our anticipated revenue. I guess we'd better go public ASAP!
Okay, so I'm at that small technical school on the Charles River in Cambridge. Being a Masshole originally, many of my high school friends are inmates at UMASS Amherst. Though they are not obliged to do as much work as I in order to simply get a diploma, those enrolled in the honors program or just a more difficult major do as much if not more work than I.
The quality of education is nearly identical as well. Yes, MIT and schools like it might have "world class" researchers and Nobel Lauriates, but ask most students and you'll find that a faculty member's ability to teach is almost always inversely proportional to the amount of recognition they have in their field. Our undergraduate laboratories are comparable, and in many cases, a motivated student at UMass has more opportunity to do higher research than a student here at the Institute because there is less competition for such positions.
So why are my friends' public school degrees worth "less" than mine when we graduate?
The answer -- the pre-screening of the students. MIT, Hahvahd, Yale, Stanford, etc. are all considered top notch because they're a bitch to get into. The public schools are less-selective, which lowers the respectability of the degree. My father is a graduate of the State University of New York system, and had to work his ass off for years to prove he could do better than the Ivy graduates who walked through doors held wide open for them after graduation.
Where this all fits in is that Saylor intends to make his university avaialable to EVERYONE. Presuming he manages to overcome all the other difficulties mentioned (how will a student get access to personal help?, how will students collaborate?, how will lab work and research be performed?, etc.), the degree will still have little value to its holders if ANYONE is able to obtain one. Yes, the argument will be made that one still has to prove they deserve the degree --- but talk to the admissions staff at all the "top tier" schools and you'll find plenty of students who would be successful are turned away. Being qualified isn't enough, you must be OVER qualified.
So, while I applaud Saylor's efforts, and think that he might even be able to create a formidable university (ever the optimist, when it comes to technology), I think he'll be making a major mistake if he doesn't institute at least a semi-rigorous admissions policy that should get even stricter once a student base is established.
From what I've investigated, looking into getting a Masters at University of Illinois, is that you take tests at a proctoring site (physical, not virtual)like Sylvan Learning Center. The University hires a company which specializes in giving tests, like the places where you take SATs or GRE tests.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
I think what he was saying was that the social interaction of attending a real university would be missing. This is a very important part of the study. Learning to interact with your peers in a mutually beneficial way. What social interaction do you learn at college? How do snort down beers and shots of whiskey? I went to school to learn a curriculum, not to become a touchy-feely people person. I interact socially via other means anyway. The first priority for me when attending college was to learn how to solve problems (engineering) and understand the basic scientific principles. While I enjoyed social interaction with friends and girlfriends :), I probably would have gotten better grades if I didn't have those distractions. (except for the girls, can't do without em.). I think that people who believe in learning social interaction as a priority at college (opposed to the actual studies) are, by and large, Liberal Arts majors if you ask me. (Not intended as a troll, just an opinion).
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
So is this unversity going to have false professors and a false dean? Or maybe robots or something? All the money that this guy donated, is it not "real"?
I think the whole point of this is that a lot of people don't have access to unversities, because the live in a "jungle in Colombia" (they'll need electricity to plug the computers tho). If you can go to a "real" university, and learn from "real" people, and have parties, then go. It's not like this is going the replace "real" universities..
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Not to be too OT...but just go ahead and read the article before commenting.
You may well come away with the same feelings, but honestly, you'll benefit a lot more from taking a moment to read things over before forming an opinion than we will from reading your comments.
What makes you think college is the only place you can learn these things?
Thanks a lot for pointing that out. The oversight has been corrected.
I have a five year university degree, and I've been doing software consulting for the last seven years. I've come to specialize, by the nature of my day-to-day work, into a specific area of computer science (language theory). Now I came to the point where I really need to acquire new knowledge, at the graduate and post-graduate level. Going back to school is not an option for me. But, being an independent contractor, I've decided to take a break from paid work for a while, and dedicate several months to studying my target subject. An online university is exactly what I needed. Since it doesn't exist, I had to make do with the lecture notes which some university teachers post on their home pages. The info I got this way is of excellent quality, but it was hell to gather it. I spent over two months just trying to figure out what I should read in the first place, and what is the optimum order. Then, finding these courses online is no small job. I would rather spend this time reading the papers, than looking for them.
I am very comfortable with learning on my own, just from lecture notes and research papers. But at times I could save huge amounts of very precious time (I'm paying for it dearly by giving up top hourly rates available to me in Toronto), by asking three question in an email, and send it to the author of the course. I would only ask the three questions which I couldn't answer despite all my efforts, only after I answered all the others. Unfortunately, there is nobody out there who will help me. I can't bother Carnegie Mellon professors with my stupid questions; they are way too busy with their own research, and they need all the time they can get to cater to paying students. I am very grateful as it is, just for making the lecture notes available on the Net.
Florin
At least as I understand it, he will willingly donate as much as it takes to get the university running. It has precedent: J.D. Rockefeller poured money into the University of Chicago for over 20 years before it got on its feet. But for the project to succeed, it eventually has to become self-sufficient, without Saylor's or anyone else's continued donations. Viable, but difficult, especially without tuition. And how are you going to pay grad students? Here's hoping, though I won't hold my breath.
"Oh Bother", said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
First of all... WoW! This is a great idea! Free education given to whoever that wants it, not locked into a system where you have to somehow find money to pay for tuition before you can "rightfully" receive education. Toward the end of the article, he even predicted a kind of hesitance from established traditional education systems, but said that they will eventually realize the good of this.
Well, my take on this is that online universities will NOT replace "physical" universities. Simply because coursework does not constitute the entire university experience. In spite of the beauty of making information available to whoever wants it, there are still glaring limitations. For example, what about science courses that require lab work? Online students will be limited in their learning experience if they cannot access lab facilities to apply what they are learning. A lot of education isn't merely picking up knowledge; there is the need for the student to practically use that knowledge before he "truly knows" it. Besides, how do you grant degrees on programs like chemistry, etc., if the student has never physically performed any chemistry labwork before?
Then you have the whole social development issue. Being able to learn in isolation without being forced to learn how to deal with people may result in a rather unbalanced education. Especially if people are deluded to think that the online university is "equivalent" to a real university. And no, chatting online, etc., is not sufficient, because online "socializing" is just .... different. When you're online, there is a certain sense of anonymity (whether real or not) that isn't there in real life. And you can choose to ignore ppl online quite easily, whereas in the real world you sometimes actually get to learn how to deal with people you don't agree with.
Well, I'm not trying to slam the idea, but just want to point out that, it's too easy to jump the gun especially with terms like "online university" and think, incorrectly, that learning online is sufficient. I think the analogy with the Library of Congress is a more accurate picture of this resource. You can only do that much online: give information and publish lectures. But that only forms a part of the whole educational experience.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
this post sorta bugs me
it does _not_ need to be assessed to be of any value
a centralized repository of information is worthwhile in its own right
personally, i think it would be worse if a grading system were introduced
In all reality, however, It's most probable that little will come of this. A university that is available entirely online is of little worth. Most colleges across the nation are starting online classes as we speak, so they fill the void already that an online university could hope for.
I think that you missed one key word here: Free.
Sure the existing colleges may have SOME online classes, but this one will be totally online, and totally free.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Actually Ivy CS departments rank pretty high (in the top 10 usually) and Princeton and Cornell have pretty good engineering programs.
Of course I'm biased as you can see from my user info.
How can you have an Ivy college without walls for the Ivy to grow on?
:)
ok - bloody bad form following up ur own post, but I have another point to add - this times it's a plus for an online uni.
I could be an idea for post-grads that want to do something that is not available at the uni that they are at - and they're not _really_ prepared to travel to another uni after settling in the town that they currently reside
Captain SpankMunki
The opinions contained in this document are in no way expressed.
1) Credibility. If I were an employer, I wouldn't trust an online Uni as far as I could throw them. Excuse me for not sounding like I 'move with the times' or any of that crap. But as a credible source - My trust would be better placed in a distance learning institute for a valid degree more than some online affair.
2) The whole uni issue is not just a 'Clock up 320 points and gain a degree thing' for 99% of us it's 3 years of socialising/learning/getting drunk, so where an online school may give the technical skills (unlikely) your social skills will resemble those of a hermit - with a skin colour to match.
Ok,ok - I'm not saying that an online distance learner will spend all their time inside - but the social skills will remain/become absolute pants.
Lots of employers are looking for those that not only have the technical ability, but can also talk/interact as a member of a team. Fair dos - many engineers have slipped through the net and sit in a corner by themselves and consider themselves a guru in some field, but we're looking at the bigger picture here.
Captain SpankMunki
--
The opinions contained in this document are in no way expressed.
Sure, there could still be group projects with participants collaborating remotely, and that is a good thing to be able to do too, but in person interactions are just as important to a good education.
I also have to wonder about some classes, like Public Speaking. I took that class in college and I don't see how it could be done online. Even with live video conferencing, it's just not the same as being in the same room as your audience.
IF you feel this way about it, then don't enroll... but for a lot of people, this would be great... suppose you want to keep current in a field that you studied in college... or just want to do a few credits of coursework in the subject... the goal to create a high quality online university is really just the goal of creating high quality free educational content on the web... if you oppose that, then there isn't much hope that you'd learn anything from it anyway...
Amazing magic tricks
I am prejudiced because I feel that both black and white and everyone else should be able to do mathematics and english, and that the SAT has the same questions for both blacks and whites. Now if the white paper said "What is 1+1?" a) pi b) 4 c)942923 d) 2, and the black paper asked to explain the history of integration in detail, including dates, then your post would be fair. Hmm, what would be some qualifications? Basic knowledge in computers for a CS course, 4 years of Spanish for a foreign language course, ??? I go to an international school in the Bahamas, and over 50% of the students are black, and yet most are getting accepted left right and center with scholarships, same as the white kids in our school. If there's a checkbox on the SAT that says that I can sign up for the Swiss-German-American-Bahamian special financial assistance program, then I'd tick it, but there isn't. Odd how there is one for "African-Americans'. If you think that you are so "underprivaledged" that you can't learn basic mathematic or verbal skills, then I feel sorry for you. All things considered, you're not setting a very intelligent role model for minorities.
Tough to imagine interactive online courses. Simultaneous questions from 100, 1000, 10,000 students!
We recognize a GED as somehow different from a high school diploma. It's appropriate to recognize correspondace college-whether that correspondance is paper or electronic--as different, too.
As a side note: what paranoid fantasy prompts the statement Universities will lose control of knowle4dge, as they should ? What knowledge do they control: calculus? thermodynamics? Kant?
Forgive my ignorance in, uh, all things...
How is the Cooper Union a Free Online University? TIA
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
There's already a project about doing "virtual"
lectures, the "Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern"
(Virtual University Bavaria, see www.vhb.org).
They start this semester (which started today, on
march 15th 2000), and offer some first courses
for online teaching based on HTML and PDF with
assistance given via private mail, mailing lists
and some chat systems.
Maybe have a look, it's german language, though.
- Hubert
require students to go to house partys every Friday.
Yes office I am stoned out of my fucking mind and triping on X, it is a requirement by my school, let me enjoy my higher education Pig.
Where can I enroll? : )
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Let's apply the lessons of Open Source to education...
1. Open the content.
Get leaders in their field to create educational materials that are massively-peer-reviewed for errors. Think of it as a bigger version of Linux Documentation project. Students can post questions on-line and receive answers. (However, the answers they receive might not be correct.)
2. Sell support and services.
One may learn all they want from the on-line materials. But to get a certificate proving that they learned it, they can take tests that are monitored at a regular bricks-and-mortar location (like taking any other certification exam). Does this best address the cheating problem?
Also, experts in certain fields could charge money to provide individualized follow-up information and accurately answer questions.
As a current college student...I feel as if I am wasting my time (not money...thank God for scholarships) on a time when there is a lot of partying and little education...all to get a piece of paper that says I am know some theory but have no real application.
At one of these college....would you still get that piece of paper? Or just a picture of it?
I hope it is set up well for those who want to continue their education without necessarily seeking a degree. It seems to me that that's the best part of this. I'd have a lot of trouble budgeting the time and money for a traditional education, not to mention that I simply don't live (and work) in an area where the top professors are. Some employers will probably even give their employees time during their day to take advantage of this. Those with plans for continuing education will be saving money on tuitions and productivity in eliminating workers commute time to the local college. If this works even close to as well as it could, it is money well spent and will pay back to the community (the entire global community) over and over again.
On another note (as I think about what the entire global community encompasses), this makes it even more important that we have good, unrestricted net access in our local libraries and other public places. We don't want this online university to be a priviledge only for those who can afford computers and internet connections. That will only widen the gaps in our society, something which the founder is apparently attempting to lessen (by making the university free).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
distance learning has gone on for ages, many people who do these degrees are already in work, they want to improve their education but can't afford to take time out so they combine the two. i would say they have good chance for social interaction as well as other useful skills such as discipline and time management.
I don't necessarily agree with you on that one
Many of my fellow engineering students went to college simply becuase it's de rigeur- everybody's doing it. So they slack off, they work a little(but not as hard as they could), they copy their homework assignments and they ride the curve towards getting a C (heck, maybe even a B- if they cram for the exams, and then shortly after they forget all that they learned).
where as someone who had to motivate themselves to learn on line might be in a better position- there was no "social momentum" to learn, they supplied it all by themselves.
just becuase someone went to college doesn't mean ANYTHING. What matters is how committed they are.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
As someone who graduated in the last two years, I can definitely say that the most important knowledge you gain in higher education is social. As a "geek" in high school and middle school, I was extremely well-read, and as a result, in college, there were very few classes in which I learned something *new*.
Perhaps a way to deal with the lack of socialization inherent in a virtual campus, we can force all of the students to use IRC for an hour every night. Okay, kidding. A real solution would be to allow students who have been out of high school for at least two years -- whether living in their parents' basement and slinging burgers for a paycheck, in the Army for however much time, or in a meatspace college. This would give the individual time to develop socially, away from the clique-ridden environment that is secondary education in America.
I suspect that the university itself will not be free, but rather tuition-free. There are always associated costs with education -- books, notebooks, etc. Granted, things like notebooks are irrelavent when you have pico or BBEdit, but there are still going to be things that need to be read on paper because they don't exist in electronic editions yet.
As for cheating -- this could be tough to monitor, and I agree that it could cause a problem with people flooding the market with no actual credentials. However, cheating already goes on in normal universities, and it should be dealt with by giving the student a failing grade in the particular class, and eventually lead to permanent expulsion should it be a chronic problem.
All in all, though, I think this is an incredibly good idea. I'll be enrolling.
blog |
Penn state World Campus
------- What exactly is real?
I am just wondering how this online university would pass on the: 1. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology http://www.abet.org/ 2. Computer Science Accreditation Board I do think that it is a great idea because there are probably many people like me who would like to learn things not offered at our university or who are not going to college atm. Another point, if there are group projects at the university it would give students a situation similar to how a lot of open source code is written, through email and instant messaging.
Fight Spammers!
I'd have to agree. I've taken a couple of college courses online during my high school years and they pale in comparison to the Ivy League education I'm getting now. Sure, this online university will teach people things they should learn to better themselves, but speaking from personal experience, being there and having a professor in front of you makes a world of difference.
vending machines, i.e. all those retired cigarette machines could be retrofitted
to dispense 'knowlege' (do you want the hard pack or the soft pack epistemology course?)
That would be "epistemology lights" then ?
College is certainly not all about education, for some it is hardly about education. For me the education and the resulting piece of paper (which resides in an unopeneed envelope under my stairs with a bunch of other junk) I received in college was a waste. Almost everything in my curriculum, Industrial Technology, was review for me. I already had a lot of experience and before I graduated I had a great job, was making more money than any of my teachers and was generally dissatisfied with the education I paid for.
But the experiences and lessons I learned while in college I wouldn't trade for anything.
I guess my main point is that although you may get an education in your subject matter (the level of quality is yet to be determined), you won't receive much of an education in life.
_________________________________________
Well, what about the rest? Just because he's a billionare doesn't mean he has to donate his money. It was very kind of him to donate $100 million for this cause but should he really be expected to donate more? It's his money, he should decide what to do with it, not us.
- Stop praying for someone to save you, and save yourself.-
KMFDM
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
I think that on-line universities are for certain people. Many are working folks wanting to get another degree or certification. Perhaps there are even college-age students (or high schoolers) that want to start an education or complete on on-line. However, there are many people who want more than the on-line experience. Sitting in a virtual coffee house discussing some off-the-wall theory is fun, but a real coffee house provides a bit more interaction. We do lose much in on-line communication: paralinguistic cues (like a shoulder shrug or furrowed brow) and many folks like to be in a closer physical proximity when holding a discussion. All that being said, I think we are entering an era in education where there are going to be more choices. The Internet is changing everything at a phenomenal pace -- including education. . .It's a cool time to be alive.
Perhaps you are missing Mr. Saylor's point. I have read the article and there is no mention of this institution replacing the traditional education system. Yes, there is more to school then what you could get from a web page, but no one thinks the web is going to replace school (at this point in time).
What the idea does promise is free information (education?) from the world's foremost authorities for use by the world's entire population. This 'university' will enable college students to supplement their college experience as well as enable those who cannot afford college to become educated.
A "genius knowledge bank" is now possible due to advancements in information technology and should not be dismissed by conservative thinkers. Instead of dwelling on all of the reasons this won't work, let's focus on how we can help to make this a reality.
In the face of such an noble, revolutionary idea, hacked degrees are not very concerning. The state of web security today precludes 99% of 'hackers' from being malicious. The 1% smart enough to hack an online university of this scope probably (a) already has their degree or (b) does not have enough time for degree hacking. Furthermore, fake degrees are widely used today and people who fake education are usually spotted in a short time.
I disagree with the idea that "little will come of this". The concept of online universities is very young and underdeveloped. As we develop more technology towards this goal and more education centers are created, it is probable that universities will move away from the old educational model. This process will, "make the ones that are already there better".
By the way, what makes you so happy about getting your degree handed to you by a *living* dean? I do not understand the benefit.
The idea of a free univeristy is extremely interesting.
I'm an Electrical engineering college student in Spain, and sometimes I try to find information on the Internet about interesting subjects that I'm not able to learn on my own university.
In the past months I've been trying to learn something about WAP, Firewire, UMTS, and even about biology, chemistry, or astrophysics and I have been unable to find anything interesting on the Internet: all I find is either too short and superficial or extremely technical documents aimed only to developers.
I feel there's a real lack of advanced level information on a lot of subjects on the Internet, and that's the reason because I always try to find a good book on the subject rather than relying on the Internet contents.
A free University would be interesting in covering the gap in that zone. It would be a brilliant idea to create a place gathering information from different sources, providing knowledge to all who want to learn.
And I think of some kind of free university build by contributors around the world, just like Linux is build by the open source community.
I'm only an student, but I'm sure that I'm able to create documents, tutorials, short courses on topics I've studied at an undergraduate level that would be interesting to others.
Maybe the diploma issued by that university (if any) would be useless, but I want a university to learn and knowledge is never useless, even if I don't have a diploma to prove I know.
It is a huge project that can only be done with a lot of money, and some people coordinating it all, but I encourage those with resources to make it happen.
I don't know about everybody else on slashdot, but 99% percent of the computer programming skills I have came fron the internet. The other 1% is split between college classes and books. An online university could offer direction while leveraging the huge amount of information available on the internet. Students would however miss out on learning how to deal with a beurocracy and miss out on social interaction. A remedy for that could be requiring students to join a political party or work at a government run organization and require students to go to house partys every Friday. I hope it works. I would love to give it a try. -Andy
Mmmmmm.... Well this is my sig.
It'd be great to see someone dealing with the dark, silent void that happens after graduation.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
There are many schools that are piloting small programs, and distance learning/independant studies are quite popular, so this is going to happen, just he is giving and ENDOWMENT to cover the startup/operation of the school, so what ever money they make in interest/investments, that goes toward technology/paychecks/other expenses. Neil
But I also agree with those that say that college is more about the people you meet and things you do outside of class than it is about the classes. I think that those people who get their "degrees" from a place like this will find themselves only slightly better off than those without. I mean really as an employer who would you choose? A person who got their degree from the local Community College (or the worst college you can think of), Or would you choose the person that got their degree online?
Universities are educational institutions, but they do more than simply educate. They also certify. That is what the testing and diplomas are for. The school is saying that you have been exposed to a set of material. An online university can not provide that for all the issues of cheating that have been mentioned. But, it can provide very good educational resources (something along the lines of lectures) that can be improved with time and made into a very useful resource.
Don't be stupid. Sure, it looks ood on your resume & impresses your high school classmates, but Ivy League schools do, by virtue of their eliteness, have a number of advantages. I mean, where else can you pour hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants during a English exam?
So you're saying that there only needs to be one proponent from each "discipline of knowledge?" I guess if we're going to look at it that way, they shouldn't need ANY professors. Just throw a few PDFs of textbooks on the site and let it run itself. Of course, then it would have to compete with vending machines, i.e. all those retired cigarette machines could be retrofitted to dispense 'knowlege' (do you want the hard pack or the soft pack epistemology course?)
I for one think that in most subject areas there needs to be more than one faculty member representing the body of knowledge. I can think of a few chilling examples of professors (i.e. in the area of Psychology) who I wouldn't want representing the entire discipline they teach from within.
Perhaps the whole school districts should shut down and restart, to shuck off a few counterproductive Teacher's Unions. Disband the unions and make teaching into a profession again. Redistribute some of the money saved from not having to pay Union extortion as merit-based pay raises to the teachers.
"in a social, face to face way with your peers and have never participated in a technical argument/discussion then you will be a fish out of water even if you have been writing kernel patches for linux since you were 3 yeare old."
I am a fish out of water?
;)
Zzzz
[Do we want a bunch of script kiddies running around with their hacked degrees, flooding the job market based on false credentials?] What, exactly, do you think the university situation is now? All a degree means is that you had the money to pay tuition, and managed to stay conscious for 4 years. There are many people in this country who are quite intelligent, but dont have the money to pay tuition, and dont work well enough within the confines of the standard academic system to have what it takes to get a good scholarship. This kind of a thing would be perfect for us. If it's built right, "script kiddies" wont be much of an issue. We've come a long way with security, and many precautions can be taken (such as everything being validated by a human) to prevent such abuse. It's about time they even the playing field for those of us without the money for a decent college, and who dont learn well in the environment community colleges offer.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Slappy
Another big problem with traditional universities are some of the BS rules that they impose on students to complete their degree. Consider this: I have almost 100 credits -heavy on the math/science/engineering with a better than 3.2 overall GPA. But, due to the aforementioned problems(having to work, etc.), my GPA in my actual degree program at my last school(I was a transfer student) fell below a 2.0. So, I either have to lick some professors sweaty balls to get back into school or find another school to take me. Why should it be difficult for me to finish my CS degree? I'm a fricken professional computer programmer for crying out loud, and I should be able to pursue my education without hassle. These rules seem to be designed for kids, not for serious professionals looking to improve their career options.
And so, I have been seeking an online university where I can finish my degree. I think the internet with email, discussion groups, chats, and the like would provide an ideal way for me to take classes. I too would like to see employment opportunities earned solely by merit. But we all know most PHB's want to see that piece of paper. Any recommendations are encouraged.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
OK... Looks like this is the first post. Yippee! Hows this going to work then? For this to be of any value peoples work will have to be assessed. Imagine hanving to mark 100 million (a figure from the text) essays on "The rise and fall of Socialism" or a stats paper. Hackers could have a ball bumping up their grades too. Have I got the wrong impression? I think for a University to be any use to anyone then assessment of peoples work will be essential.
I'm doing a Java course through web based study at the moment. I can't believe that this kind of study could possibly come anywhere near replacing a proper university. It's hard to explain why in a short post but there would be so many things missing. Someone posted earlier about the lack of social interaction with other students. This is vital in the development of any good student. You must learn to communicate with your peers in a mutually beneficial fashion. Someone else said that what we are doing here on slashdot is just as good but COME ON! Its a totaly different thing! Also I find it incredibly hard to avoid the temptation to skip bits which bore me. The thing about proper lectures is that you can't escape even when you want to. I've skiped some boring bits in the course I'm doing at the moment and now I'm a bit confused. I suppose one of the advantages of this kind of course is that I can go back over old stuff with out much bother but at a proper university I could go and talk to one of the Profs and he would put me straight. I just think that kind of socially interactive learning is much better. This is probably just because I am a TERRIBLE student. There's more but my boss is watching me and this is pretty obviously not the crappy Access application I'm supposed to be working on.
Sorry. I didn't really explain myself properly. What I was on about was social interaction with people studying the same subject. Learning how to communicate in the lingo of that subject and learning to solve problems in your subject together.
You could be the best programmer in the world but if you have never worked in a team you are more likely to be a hinderance than a help in a large project. If you have never had to communicate in a social, face to face way with your peers and have never participated in a technical argument/discussion then you will be a fish out of water even if you have been writing kernel patches for linux since you were 3 yeare old.
This is true, but imagine how much better our grades would be if it was not for all the extra-curricular activities.
Hell.... I might even have graduated!
But I suppose I would not be the well balanced person I am now. Mmmmnnnnn.
I think what he was saying was that the social interaction of attending a real university would be missing. This is a very important part of the study. Learning to interact with your peers in a mutually beneficial way.
Imagine you had the choice of working with someone who had earned ther degree in front of a computer or someone who had earned ther degree at a proper university interacting with other students. I bet the latter would be a far better choice.
Certainly, an on-line curriculum could complement a typical college education, but it's doubtful that students, parents and faculty would be satisfied solely on-line. Continuing education or recertification programs are more practical educational missions for an on-line university. Additionally, the service cannot be free.
i think you're missing the point of the process here. most of "life's" lessons learned at college could just as easily be learned elsewhere. an online education is perfect for someone who doesn't have the time or energy or money to conform to such a ridiculous standard as going to school for 4 years to learn jack shit. the point of an online college isn't to nurture a weak mind into adulthood...but rather to teach you something that you actually want to learn over a medium that allows you to do it from anywhere, anytime. how could this possibly be bad?
part of school however, I think is to discipline you to work and to think. I was a pretty hardcore worker before school (Architecture at Berkeley) but school took things to a new level. Education is hard work.
It is the synergistic aspect of a live brick and mortar (concrete and rebar) school that I think an online univeristy will lose -- does any one take school by video tape seriously?
A student needs to make sure that school doesn't get in the way of his/her education, for sure, but also I think a student in the big schools (I went to JC's for a while which was much more lax) also learns better to roll with the punches, whether that means not sleeping, or getting his/her ass reemed gradewise.
I will say however, that the quality of teaching in the junior colleges outside of architecture was equal or better, most of my non-architecture profs suck hard. They teach because they have to because they are researchers at Cal.
And so it goes....
Yes, there are several projects like this. I am in the process of starting up a new one! I would welcome the help of others...
l eases/200003/20000316king.html
After 70 years, copyrights usually expire and books become Public Domain. Shakespeare, Twain, Jefferson, etc.
The Gutenberg Project (http://www.gutenberg.net) is compiling public domain books for free electronic distribution. They distribute them in ASCII format, and I would like to redistribute them in XML so they can be transformed for any use (PDF, electronic book, web page, etc). Another site is http://www.openebook.org/ Finally, Adobe is moving in the same direction. Read this press release for more info: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressre
Using these resources, we can perhaps find a more flexible way to distribute books free to the world. What kinds of ideas do you have after checking out these sources?
Wouldn't it be much more useful to donate this kind of money to our poorer public and private elementary and secondary schools? These schools have much more influence on the development of society as a whole than universities do. They also happen to be the institutions that need resources the most. Imagine what a new computer lab could do for some of these schools. Imagine up-to-date textbooks!
There is an enormous wealth gap in this country. Education is the way to eradicate it. Lets focus on making high quality education available to everyone at all levels.
--
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-- Slashdot sucks.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
I've read many of the responses to this article and I think there is a big misunderstanding. Sure there are lots of online college classes. Sure there are some Universities and Chat offer full degree programs online. But what of quality? Has any of these programs evolved the learning/teaching process to meet the demands of a new meduim or simply copied existing ideas/techniques?
What IVY Leage is supposed to mean is that there is a given level of quality both in the teaching and a suffieceintly high level of difficulty to gaurantee graduating students meet high standards. Most universities run their school just like a business. Selling classes online is a cheap revenue generator. Acccreditation is a joke and is pretty much worthless. It also means that potential employers know that when they hire a graduate they are getting what they pay for.
The next question is what would someone have to do to create such an institution?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Not everyone that goes to college is fresh out of high school... I'm almost thirty years old and my "life skills" are fine, thanks.
But with a 2 year old son and a job, an online university like this would be perfect for me.
As someone who recently joined the educational world, I have been thinking a lot about the "threat" of online education.
If you want to survive in business, you must first understand what business you are in. For example, Ford is in the business of "individual transportation" NOT of making cars, since, if someone made a new machine that could transport people faster and cheaper than a car, then Ford would be out of business.
Universities are in the business of certification, NOT education. The primary goal of a University is to certify that all its graduate have learned a certain amount of stuff. A secondary goal is to help those students that need assistance in learning.
An MIT degree means something because we know MIT only gives degrees to those that have satisfied the many requirements.
Standarized tests can also be used to do some certification but they are (by neccessity) nowhere as effective predictors as, say, an MIT education.
So, these online universities are a great idea but in the end their product is completely worthless unless they find some way to keep tabs on the students' progress. For example, by giving them tests (which require grading), projects (which require assistance), interactions (which requires experts), etc. At which point you end up with a traditional university.
So, Im all for these free online universities! I would love to give my students a URL which has movies, text, and other fun stuff that deals with the class Im teaching. Still, I will need to give them tests/projects to make sure they have learned something and did not spend all their time reading slashdot. I will also need to be there for them when they have trouble understanding the material.
The way I see it, these online Universities are nothing more than a fancy (and, thankfully, free) textbook.
Also, the idea that famous profs will teach classes for free is silly. Sure, profs will give a lecture for free, a lecture that talks about the research they are doing, and points out how great their results are. But, to give a whole semester-long unbiased class on some topic, that, my friends, is a whole other story (and a lot of work).
An online university may be worth little to you, but to people who can study off hours, and don't have to pay exorbitant fees to go to school, an online university will be a godsend.
Simply being able to get an education without costing the school anything except bandwidth and testing time means that the schools costs would be much lower, going almost entirely to content creation, and where content creation means more classes it is a good thing.
One advantage of an online university is that you get the best education their professors can give you. Teaching assistants are for filling in, because a flesh and blood professor can only see so many students in a day, and can only give so many lectures. Once a professor wrote down and edited their lecture, everyone could read it, and learn the same from it, without the prof having a bad day, or a TA without a deep understanding of the subject filling in.
To me, the importance of having a person hand me a degree, which I wear a funny robe, is much less than the importance of being able to upgrade my skills at a real university, even while working at a regular job.
That means this e-college will have professors that care more about research than their classes, have grading curves that are lax enough to keep the athletes and the alumni's kids from failing, and TAs (who will suck) that will be teaching most of the classes.
[TA] So.. umm.. umm.. the equation.. umm..
[Student214] Speak louder!
*TA is too shy and hides in corner
[Student788] Can't hear you!
[Student112] Dude, this university sucks ass!
I've used some of the "distance learning" techniques while I was in school (primarily as a way to skip class). Mainly lectures on video tape and in RealAudio over the net. And you know, it wasn't really very useful. A boring lecture is three times as boring when you're experiencing it that way. The only advantage is you can pause and replay things, and you can make fun of the lecturer (a la MST3K).
But as for random access, that technology has already existed for thousands of years, in *books*. Books are very useful, and they are a lot cheaper than lectures. And in most cases, they're a heck of a lot more informative. I think of lectures as a way to make things more entertaining in order to hold my attention. But if I'm into something, I'd rather have a dozen books on it than listen to someone run their mouth for an hour or two.
Also, having attended a few company sponsored training classes in the "real world", I have to say that lectures like this are a scam. I can learn more from a book in one morning than what it takes three days to cover in a class setting.
I think any highly motivated person would be better served having access to electronic textbooks than to an electronic "university". And the benefit of free, electronic textbooks, is that they can be integerated in the curiculum of real cash-poor institutions. They can also be more easily translated, and easily updated.
Is anyone aware of any organized efforts to create textbooks of this nature? Something kind of like the Linux Documentation Project, but less specific for scientific and academic subjects.
Very cool. I hadn't thought of the "forcing you to learn" aspect. This was something that irritated the hell out of me in undergrad., students only consuming what they were fed and not thinking. They might as well save themselves some years and get a tech. degree.
You got me thinking about using something like this to continue education. I did my college years; I'm not interested in repeating them.
The article states that he is planning on taping new lecture series, why not purchase the rights to some of the quality previously taped lecture series out there? There are some of very high quality, and he'd save a year of time immediately off the bat...
LetterRip
A few things I skipped..
"familiarity with the scientific method" - I would suggest doing replication studies. Each student would be required to do two. This would require some presorting of a lot of scientific literature- perhaps professors from the various fields could reccommend studies that should be replicated, and put an associated difficulty rating with them. The rep. study would need to be thuroughly researched and planned out (similarly to a Research Methods class....), and then reviewed by an expert. This will be costly in terms of expert time (six hours per student... likely more). Experimental design/planning software could greatly improve the effectiveness of the experimental design, and significantly reduce the burden on the expert.
LetterRip
fstmm@yahoo.com
I've given the creation of online and open Universitys (and other educational facilities...) a significant amount of thought. Here are some suggestions...
These course should be for memorization/lecture intensive courses where direct classroom experience is of limited value. Many of the prerequisite 100/200 level course are of this sort.
There should be a legal requirement for all schools/colleges to accept these as course equivalents (Each school can base it's cut off level on comparitive scores for typical students of that school, but if the cut off is met, credit transfer is cumpulsory for equivalent courses...)
For lab work - a significant (2/3? 3/4?) amount of lab time for 300 and lower Physics, Chemistry, and Biology is a waste. The reason- few students prepare for the lab, their understanding of the principles behind the experiment are often dismal, the experiments are often trivial in nature and execution, there is a great deal of duplication of effort/course material for each lab taken.
Introductory (and often higher level) lab courses often have as primary purposes- familiarity with the scientific method, and familiarity with lab equipment. For the familiarity with lab equipment, I would suggest a certification process with local labs. With emulation software to gain familiarity with the apparatus ahead of time. Those who have completed the required lecture material, and scored a prerequisite score on a familiarity exam could sign up to come in and be tested on the equipment (either individually or as a group).
For exams - there are already computer based testing facilities located around the world. Likely a 'cost only' solution could be negotiated with these facilitys, this would reduce the likely hood of cheating.
All multiple choice based exams should be free, but material requiring essays etc., should have a nominal fee associated with them. This should only be for creative essays, - subject matter/content essays can be accurately and successfully graded with software.
Classes that are oral intensive can be done by having central meeting places that travel is required to for the occassional presentation.
Much of the discussion and critique can be done by a virtual audience (via webcasting the presentation, and portion of the future presenters could be signed up to be a live audience... plus interested outsiders can attend the lectures etc...)
I have more to say on the logistics of distributed grading of essays and many other topic, but I'll leave that for another post.
LetterRip
fstmm@yahoo.com
I'm all for new ways for a busy geek to pick up an extra degree, but...
/. had a story about a good example of such a school, the Beacon School, IIRC. Granted that was the rare gem of a public school, but it could be a good paradigm for the type of schools I'm proposing. I know that when *I* become a billioniare, one of the charitable things I'd like to do is establish a private high school that *I* would have LIKED to attend.
Is the college level where more money needs to be spent to produce Computer Science majors?
Now, I don't have the statistics myself, but every few months, one of the industry or regular news magazines has one of those "doom and gloom" stories about how enrollment in CompSci programs is going DOWN (more work for the rest of us tho). The existing programs can turn out some EXCELLENT graduates.... if they can attract the students.
But WHY can't they get students?
*I* think that question could be answered, at least in part, by looking at the current high school culture that encourages bit-brained jocks, and casts geeks as psychotic killers who must be kept down.
Perhaps the money could be better spent by endowing a series of private magnet schools at the high school level, and perhaps even at the middle school level as well. Disavow completely the failed education of the public schools and establish a strong pre-CompSci curriculum in these schools, and scholarships for intelligent students willing to excell, as opposed to allowing geeks to be tormented by the jocks, as is the norm in public schools.
Not long ago
Get enough geek bilioniares together, and you could establish a series of these magnet schools across the country. Even better, you could locate them near universities with whom you could establish dual-enrollment programs. And the better the computer science college, the better the location. Put one of these magnet schools in Palo Alto near Stanford, in Atlanta near GaTech, in Boston near MIT, Pasedena near CalTech, etc.
Offer dual enrollment classes so you can get the busywork classes out of the way quickly. When your HS english class gives both HS and college english credit, that leaves more time for useful computer classes on college. The same applies for history, economics, (insert generic required-by-the-state bore of a class here), etc.
And by locating these magnet schools near the appropiate universities, you also locate them near a fairly good bit of the industry. Wouldn't you perfer your HS age kids to work their summers as interns at Hewlett Packard, rather than flipping burgers at McDonalds? I sure would.
Get 'em young, I say. Find the intelligent kids who would be worthwhile, productive citizens, and give them the chance to get out of the jocks-and-cheerleaders uber alles high school culture as early as you can. Nurture their talents, do not suppress them. I bet that with a nurturing pre-college environment, more people would major in college CompSci programs. And just imagine the quality of the geeks that would be produced by college graduation if you could get 'em at 6th grade!!!
john
Imagine all the people...
Well, they've already got one step in the right direction towards simulating the 'Ivy League' experience. At an online university, there is no chance in hell that you'll ever see your profesor outside of class or get any advice on what classes to take - just like at Fair Harvard.
Student: Hi proffesor smith!
Prof: Do I know you?
Student: you're my academic advisor.
Prof: really?
Student: it's not important. Just sign this form and let me go home.
Prof: works for me.
Saylor himself said: "Done right, this will impact the lives of millions of people forever. Done wrong, it's just noise in a can." Whether it will be done right remains to be seen: As yet, there is no structure, no staff, no specific curriculum, no estimate of the final cost.
Once they said that it was going to be centered around video footage of "geniuses and leaders," I was skeptical. We're not at broadband just yet. Hopefully they'll put some effort into plain ol' text and/or ebooks, too. Seems like an important part of an online education would be following your own pace, not just watching videotaped lectures.
Instead, the parts of the class that are to be evaluated would have to be automated. Like multiple choice tests. Kinda skanky, but seems like a necessity. Also, the definition of "cheating" would probably have to change; since it's free, anyone who got "kicked out" for cheating could just come back under another nick. Anyone who stays would have to stay because they care, period. Encourage everything currently considered cheating: collaborative work (via instant messengers, internet phone, IRC, whatever), use of reference materials, everything. This is good real life training anyway: you always collaborate with people to get things done.
Also, it seems like they could learn alot from the slashdot moderation system. Only instead of moderators, you'd have online T.A.'s. T.A. "points" would have to be awarded on a different basis, though. Maybe you could take a little certification course (also free?) to help with certain online classes. Because individual feedback is also a vital part of education, and you can't have one prof do that for a million people! So distribute the work over 1000 T.A.s. Is this cheating too, or helping oneself and others to understand better?
There's also WAY more school here that you can get on a physical campus in fixed boring classes with your physical body. With something like this, it might be possible to test the limits of the humand mind by opening up a great
deal of classes and timeshare between what interests the fancy at the moment. The colleges I remember like to control information and punish those who don't abide strictly by thier program.
I think that my "human limits" have already been sufficiently tested thank you very much. The problem you have is you really haven't hit the wall yet. Just keep taking classes and eventually you will find one that you simply can't handle at all. Also colleges have what are unaffectionally called "weed out" classes. Essentially it keeps things nice and elite to prevent outsiders leaking their precious information or "corrupting" their dicipline.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
OK... Looks like this is the first post. Yippee! Hows this going to work then? For this to be of any value peoples work will have to be assessed. Imagine hanving to mark 100 million (a figure from the text) essays on "The rise and
fall of Socialism" or a stats paper. Hackers could have a ball bumping up their grades too. Have I got the wrong impression? I think for a University to be any use to anyone then assessment of peoples work will be essential.
On a related note what will the degree be worth to an employeer coming from the net? I mean it's all well an good getting a Phd from such a university however if people think it came from a cereal box you aren't going to be able to use it effectively.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Wouldn't an online univeristy be quite inexpensive? Instead of having departments you would have 1 professor in each area. The "classes" would just be a set of web pages, maybe even tests and the like. I guess the "professors" would have to stick around to update the pages, but its not like they have to show up in a room and talk for an hour...
Esperandi
> I think what he was saying was that the social
> interaction of attending a real university would
> be missing.
Well since man is a social animal...I doubt this
would mean sticking yourself in a room and staring
at a web page for 4 years.
What about the people who ar ealready around you?
Does one have to be surrounded by students to
reap the full benefits of study?
Social interaction takes place every day. Its
not just in schools.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> Encourage everything currently considered
> cheating: collaborative work (via instant
> messengers, internet phone, IRC, whatever), use
> of reference materials, everything. This is
> good real life training anyway: you always
> collaborate with people to get things done.
I have to agree here. Definitly.
I would rather work with someone who is willing
to admit that they don't know everything and look
up or ask about what they don't know, then someone
who feels the need to just know everything.
Real work is like that. If you don't know...you
ask. People collaberate. In fact....discussing
a problem with someone else is a great way to
learn more.
As for reference material....as Einsein said...
"Never memorize anything that you can look up".
Actually...I have had tests even in high school
where we were encouraged to bring our notes to
the test. Its more important that we know how to
work through a problem then we know formulas by
heart.
Perhaps a University Sanctioned chat line where
people could IM etc...and it could be reviewed
by a TA or equiv. Just to make sure people were
discussing problems and not just saying : 1a 2b
etc.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> In order to have a decent crack at the higher
> education whip, a person would have to:
> Give up their job, or significantly reduce the
> number of hours they work,
So noone has ever worked a full time job to
put themselves through school? Somehow I doubt
that.
Hell I have no degree...because I work at a
University I can take 2 free courses per semester.
I could get a degree...in 8 years or so.
It may take longer...but work and education
do not have to be mutually exlusive.
> In this case, potentially have to invest in
> computer hardware
One could argue that to get into a real university
you have to put in the inital investment of 4
years in high school (not true...my sister
spent 1.5 years in HS...left and got her GED,
then went into colledge 2 years early)
Yea...its an inital investemtn that has to be made
to be able to do it...however...given the cost
of normal universities...this is a very low
enty investment. Besides...would you really go off
to a real university without a computer these
days? Would you want to be subject to working on
papers whenever a PC is free in the lab or when
the computer labs are open?
Seriously...I was a school for a year a few years
back (school life wasn't for me...I learn better
off on my own doing things then in classrooms)
and I knew 1 person without a computer of his
own.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I don't think the intent is to grade and sort out students. The format seems more colloquim style, like a public lecture series, similar to the free Engelbart web cast offered by Stanford sometime ago. I think this will work very well as a supplement for mature and interested students, but I don't it will replace the undergraduate or graduate experience where interaction is crucial.
While I understand you're initial concerns, I think some of them are answered. For example, some of the schools I've investigated for getting a Masters in CS, like the University of Illinois, aren't simply offering "A web page". They're offering things like streaming video and pdf class notes which are synchronized with the video all from the comfort of your home. You can fit it in with a busy schedule because it's at your convenience; furthermore, I like the idea of streaming video...you can pause your professor, re-listen to a section, and go on! Questions are submitted by e-mail, or on-line chats, or newgroup type forums. Granted for some courses with heavy lab requirements (Chemistry, Physics) you may still need to physically attend school, but if we ever get some really good experiment simulation software, that may be able to be done from home too. Your comment about life skills is also interesting. Don't you believe that these "life skills" are changing to more computer-oriented tasks? Perhaps becoming a little more of a self-learner by using the web and it's resources, people may develop better life skills for the world that's currently evolving.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
A single thing separates schools from the Ivy League and others of their quality (such as Stanford, Berkeley, Reed, or MIT): the students that attend them. Any university administrator worth their salt will tell you the reason a community college can never give you the same education an univerisity can, simply because there is no society of students that have an open discourse as an integral part of their life.
When you fork over $30K a year to attend Harvard or Princeton, you're not really paying for the professors; research credentials and significance in an academic field have nothing to do with how well someone can teach. You're paying for your fellow students. You could assemble the best professors from every school in the nation, Ivy League included, create an "online university" with them, and a student would not emerge as educated as one who went to Brown.
So I don't know. Within a certain number and class of students, I don't think cheating is a big enough concern to justify elaborate mechanisms to prevent it. To be fair, I am currently a graduate student at another, larger university (which shall remain nameless) -- and here, the custom is to monitor like a hawk whenever we give exams, require students to record their seat numbers, use multiple versions of exams, etc. This is a little disturbing to me, but the students seem to justify the approach -- I've caught more than one blatantly copying off another student, for instance. Where will this online university fall between these schemes? I dunno -- but I feel fairly certain that if you only impose mechanisms to detect/prevent cheating, without convincing students that it's really in their best interests not to cheat, someone will eventually figure out a way to circumvent those mechanisms.
I have heard from most of my friends in the Ivy League that those schools tend to be excellent grad schools, but mediocre undergrad schools. For that matter, compare their cs and engineering departments to MIT, Cal Tech, Purdue, CMU or Georgia Tech. They might be great at teaching philosophy, political 'science' or literature, but those aren't fields which lend themselves to quantitative analysis of how many innovations and innovators they produce (just a survey of 'reputation' isn't enough-- in these fields, where you are from is most of your reputation anyway!).
I think it is important, though, to remember that distance learning is great up to a point. Really, learning requires many things: supervised lab time, team projects, one on one instruction, etc. Distance learning is appropriate as a substitute for lectures, but there is much more to a college education than that. A school which uses distance learning resources (videotapes, internet texts, interactive homework/study aids, etc) to enhance education is great. One which tries to fit everything into a particular set of technologies which do not lend themselves to that kind of implementation is doomed to failure.
In the UK we have the Open University, which is technically the biggest in the country in terms of numbers and may well be one of the biggest in the world.
The university is set up for home learning, with TV programmes, lecture papers and other resources, with 1 or 2 residential weekends and weeks a year.
The main take up of this are people who are working, people abouve the average university age and those just interested in learning rather than other aspects of university life. Many have too busy lives to give up.
It is almost purely a teaching institution and fulfills this better than most.
It does however cost a lot and isn't embracing 'e-learning' as much as it could.
I think this new service will appeal to professionals, and those who (especially in the states) can't afford to take out loans to go to university, but still want to better themselves and learn.
Also people like single mothers who could increase their skills base, people could learn a whole new area of knowledge and not have to give up their income. In other words, if you focus awaw from the trypical college age and crowd it could offer another level of educational accessability to people.
Working for the (other) man
..... it seems like the biggest difference between this and any other education comes down to the $$. it sounds like a real 'opening of doors' for people like me who had to mortgage their soul to go to the university of their choice......and esp. for all those people who from very early on were discouraged from even forming the goal of going to college because the amount of $$ it would cost their families was beyond comprehension.
..... and with respect to shoddy degree holders 'flooding the market': i firmly believe that your education is what you make it. you could go to a local state/community college, work your ass off and emerge a really well-educated person. by the same token, you could go to a prestigious university, waste all your time there, and emerge unfit for society, much less the job market.
....or maybe we (society) will go on as we mostly have.......perfectly satisfied with mediocrity. in which case, mediocre Online U grad, mediocre Prestigious U grad.......what's the difference?
a diploma is a piece of paper, no matter what institution's name is written on it. the real value is *in* the person who 'earned' the diploma. now, on entering the job market, that fact should become blatantly clear. if joe schmoe from Online U made his degree worth something, he'll probably do well in the real world....more power to him. if his degree really is just a con job, he'll ultimately fail, or get fired, or be 'found out' in some way.........
- sonic
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Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
University education is much more wide open - if you want to try something off-the-wall like a completely online university, this is the level to do it at.
First of all, thats horseshit, but secondly, any comparative economic inequity you may perceive in the south (which once again is largely horseshit), is due to larger historical trends than any perceived adherence to privatization.
but I'll just put it here.
There's an article in the Washington Post about Marc Ewing (of RedHat fame), his wife, and the billion dollars they're now challenged with giving away.
It's a very interesting read in any case, but especially because of the financial success so many in the Free software community have been enjoying.
The only cheat-proof parts of regular university courses are the tests, everything else, with the exception of lab classes, is done outside of class.
A professor teaching a small class has a better chance of catching a plagarized essay by noting a similarity between two papers, but as long as the essays are all unique, how are they to tell what work the students did on their own?
And tests could be handled by hiring an independant agency to administer the tests somewhere local to the student. This wouldn't be free, but even with paying an examiner to watch a bunch of students, it's far cheaper than having to have a "bricks and mortar" school that everyone must attend. This isn't even much less secure, because most university tests I've seen have been administered by TAs, not the professor.
I think this could be almost, if not as secure, as the measures taken by a physical university, without costing much.
Most of you are probably still in college, so don't have the perspective to see it. Right now you want a piece of paper so you can get your job so you can succeed. However, that probably means that you don't have the time in school to play around with delving into a certain field of history or philosophy, maybe even because of the risk that it would bring your GPA down. 5 years from now, when you decide you really wish you knew something about a certain subject, you can log onto this Online University, and broaden your mind. Maybe you won't get anywhere with the piece of paper, maybe you won't even get a piece of paper, but you will be a better, more rounded person, and that is worth a lot more
Getting a degree requires that a person commit a lot of their time to it. Sure, the actual university fees may be free, but the actual cost to a person is a lot more than that.
In order to have a decent crack at the higher education whip, a person would have to:
The real route to free university education is for government to pay course fees, and provide a grant system, such as the one that's just about be clubbed to death in the UK. Yes, it means an increase in taxation in the short run, but once a generation of well educated graduates are unleashed on the nation, the increase in earnings that their degrees will bring will result in more tax going to the treasury.
Yes, I know this is a slightly simplistic look at it, but sometimes you have to look at things simply to understand rather complex issues.
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
In all reality, however, It's most probable that little will come of this. A university that is available entirely online is of little worth. Most colleges across the nation are starting online classes as we speak, so they fill the void already that an online university could hope for. I don't know about you, but I'll be happy with my paper degree, handed to me by a living dean, and the knowledge that I gained from real professors (and maybe a Teaching Assistant here and there). We don't need to focus on building new universities. Just make the ones that are already there better!
Brad Johnson
--We are the Music Makers, and we
are the Dreamers of Dreams
Brad Johnson
I think that people who believe in learning social interaction as a priority at college (opposed to the actual studies) are, by and large, Liberal Arts majors if you ask me. (Not intended as a troll, just an opinion).
Okay, as someone you finished their degree in Theoretical Physics a couple of years ago I'll reply :) I don't think anyone here really thinks the most important thing about college is learning social interaction, of course the primary object is to learn your subject.
But the point is that there are a lot of other aspects of college which are important to the rest of your life. Learning to meet and get on with new people, how to talk to people confidently and act in groups, how to work as part of a team in projects, how to live life on your own and a million other little things which prepare people for the rest of their life. The entire college experiance contributes to these things, yes even "snorting beers and shots of whiskey" as you say. Granted you can learn all these things by staying at home and doing a remote course, but the impetus from being in a totally new place and situation is lost, and people won't gain all these new skills, making it harder for them when they finally leave home and get a job.
There are two very different issues to consider here: The education is entirely online, and entirely free... Coupled together, these two will present some unique problems as well, but let's start step by step.
Online education is full of problems. A certain level of interaction between the instructor and the student is required for teaching. Note, 'teaching' and not 'learning'. Most of us here are self-taught to a good extent, and much of our learning has been online - but not in a structured manner.
A teacher needs the visual feedback of eye contact and voice in order to know if a student 'gets it' or not. Online tends to strip that away, just as it strips away obvious sarcasm in email. Some of the most valuable things I've learned at the big U, were tangential "Oh BTW" things that were not part of the program. That spontaneity and pesonification of the material is crucial to the experience of 'being taught'.
Online collaborative technologies are not yet ready. We're limited in bandwidth, standards, and understanding. It's very hard to deliver an audio lecture, with gif slides, to people with MODEMS. Collaborative tools are emerging, but half the time drop dead at a firewall. Downloadable lesson packages might as well be shipped on CD, and the problem reduces to non-collaborative self-study...
I'm currently taking an online graduate level course, and I'm finding it very frustrating. The specialized software required for the course is Win32-biased, and has required me to compromise an otherwise stable WinNT system to accomodate it. MS has it's hooks so deeply in this stuff that it's damn near impossible to do without a dedicated computer. Overcoming the technical challenges of the experiment is so time consuming for both the teachers and the students, that the content is almost an afterthought. Maybe this is a job for a dedicated internet appliance? It's clear that a standard framework for online learning is needed. But before one can be defined and implemented, a lot of experimentation (like my course and this proposed online university maybe) is needed to see what's actually still missiong.
There is a certain need for human contact when teaching/learning. Groups of students can collaborate online in working on a project, but presenting information in an interactive way is still far off. Teaching online, synchronously, is currently analogous to herding cats. The tools are not there. The mindset is not there. The whole concept of 'teaching' will have to be revised, because todays teachers are still trying to lecture - to a webcam...
The idea of academic integrity is unenforcable online. When I was an undergrad, we were carded when taking a final exam. We literally had to show a school ID, or a driver's license, to be let into the exam hall. Much like when taking the SAT. Online, your buddy - the office guru - can take the test for you, and you get the certificate/diploma. The entire office can be consulted, or books, or friends via email... Forget timed exams.... "Sorry. BSOD! What are you gonna do? Fail me? Microsoft ate my homework!"
Enough about that... On to free education:
The fact that anyone CAN get the education will mean that the degree will be worthless. This may be a very Good Thing, since if anyone can now get a piece of paper claiming competency, then they will have to PROVE it. Good Thing indeed. I just wish there was a way for all those Weekend MBA grads that dictate technical decisions to prove their ability to do something other than run Excel.
Free education is great, and the online distribution of it is the cheapest way to keep it free. Giving people the opportunity to learn, online, is wonderful, and beneficial to all. People with the desire to learn, and ANY available time (not 9 to 5 anymore) can improve their lot in life, and the lazy scumm can't just BUY a career. Merit and knowledge will become the metric of an educated person, not the name on the seal on the parchment.
But here's the rub. Free online education - good idea; synchronous teacher-students interaction - not there yet. Free online education is nothing more than another portal in this context. It's online self-study, via a place calling itself a 'college' or 'university' which is just an organized set of links to self-paced, self-study materials. I don't see this as much different than C++ in 21 Days.
The Institution of Education is a good thing as well. Creating an environment where more than facts are taught, but modes of thinking are created, is needed. A VR_U will have to resolve the technical problems of online collaborative teaching, and create the experience of learning, where it's not just about facts. Otherwise, we're already there, except a bit more distributed.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Anyone know how they plan to handle cheating on online universities?
A major part of the reputation most ivy league school is their strong honor code policies as well as massive anti-cheating stance. How can an online university promise to be as hard on cheating as M.I.T. or Harvard when it conceivably is so easy to cheat?
This is not a troll but a genuine question...I really am interested about how they plan to guarantee this, after all I've seen a certain degree of cheating in current college environments and the idea of taking all of one's test online seems to give such tests less legitimacy than does taken in class with exam supervisors watching over students like hawks.
Anyway, one thing I have found is that online education, at least the way CNU does it, totally shifts the responsibility of education from the teacher to the student. That is, it is not their responsibility to teach me, it is my responsibility to learn. If I don't understand, I need to go to the professor -- because he will not, can not, come to me.
In essence, it is a process of discovery whereby I explore original writings in various subjects, and then discuss them (via a webboard thingy) with my classmates, then the professor grades based on how well I seem to have gotten it.
I'm sure it works different for non-phil & religious studies classes -- but for these subjects, that's how they do it. All in all, it seems to work pretty well, at least if you're motivated. It forces students to learnd & think about the actual material, instead of this "what's going to be on the test" idiocy. OTOH, it's quite a bit more time consuming than a traditional class, at least for me.
To me, this sounds like a great idea. Guys, like it or not, there are people who can't afford to go to college and are unwilling to mortgage the rest of their lives for a mediocre education. If this can be made to work, it will be a tremendous opportunity for people who know how to learn on their own. Can anyone say: geeks?
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-- Slashdot sucks.
Any Ivy league education? I havn't read the article, but from that alone I have a problem. Now, lets just say a good education, because who cares about whether or not its actually Ivy, and IMHO, the coolest schools are not.
Now, as I'm sure a huge chunk of slashdot readers are college students, or at least were, you all know that there is WAY more to school that what you could get off a web page. In perticular, the people around you. I have learned more from them then I have from classes, just about.
And what about research? You can't really conduct research that requires any sort of lab online.
I think this idea is missing the point of school, you're learning life skills as well as job skills.