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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?
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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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.
1) Congrats for being first post and posting something useful.
;)
2) The only thing I can say is wait for Online University v3.0. Hopefully by then the bugs will be worked out.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I think that he meant "What about the rest of the billionaires, why aren't they donating any money to education?"
Not, "What about the rest of *THIS* guy's money?"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Um. I think that the quote was intended as, "Okay, that's one billionaire putting his money to good use. What about the rest [of the billionaires]?"
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.
"but should he really be expected to donate more?"
ITYM "thanks! where do I sign up?!". If you'd read the article then you'd see that he views the $100M as "a deposit" - so (a) there's more on the way anyway and (b) there are probably more billionaires out there than this one guy. Now that could be fun...
Interesting reporting, putting this chap over Bill's similar gesture...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
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
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
If it's goal is to act as a replacement for an ivy league college it needs to be accessed.
Yes you are correct if all you judge something on is what it can do this thing is of worth by creating good information however that in and of itself does nothing to further the stated aim the article implies.
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
----------
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
Sure, if we work by your assumption that the south is limited to rural alabama.
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.
Sound investments with long term payout (and loyal alumni) seem to be the key to providing the long term funding that Gone Jackal frets about. Cooper Union's wise trustees allowed the Chrysler Building to be built on their land. The site brings in a tidy sum.
Of course, a small fixed number of student slots, and a merit based admissions policy seem to allow Cooper Union continue to function...
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
You beat me to one of the issues: books. He referred to Andrew Carnegie and libraries in the original article. A university is going to need textbooks for classes and a library. While it is all well and good to say that lecturers will do it for recognition and posterity, there is no way to stock a library with an up-to-date, complete collection of relevant material for free. Some items can be obtained that way. An online university could mirror Project Gutenberg. I also heard yesterday that the Oxford English Dictionary is going online and that they are looking for institutions (such as libraries) to subscribe and then provide access to communities. He could make them an offer to pay to put them online for everyone.
Then there is the issue of up-to-date technical references and textbooks. There are going to be people willing to write material for free for a good cause. But making it complete, getting it reviewed for technical accuracy and keeping it up-to-date are a different issue. A good start might be to seek out good material that is already on the net on various subjects and offer the authors a permanent, stable home for it. That alone, with a really good index and search engine could be a fantastic asset.
Another idea that might attract some good free material would be to offer a service like Source Forge to people interested in creating free content. Give them free web space, backups, CVS trees, mailing lists, etc. for the project. Host mirrors for some of the open text formatting tools: (La)TeX, texinfo, DocBook, etc. and encourage authors to use one of them and link to the mirror so that users can download the software they need easily.
And, I second the motion to interview him. Maybe we can help him set the initial direction on some of this by asking some good questions. Whether his free online university succeeds or fails in the end, it is worth the effort. It will help answer the questions about what an online school can offer and what it needs to do to offer it.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
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.
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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.