Stanford To Offer Free CS and Robotics Courses

DeviceGuru writes "Stanford University will soon begin offering a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. Initial courses will provide an introduction to computer science and an introduction to field of robotics, among other topics. The courses, offered under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), are nearly identical to standard courses offered to registered Stanford students and will comprise downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. And get this: all the courses' materials are being released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license."

Comments

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Horar]

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.

Their two different beasts.

OpenSource University?

[gsgriffin]

So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.

Re:OpenSource University?

[zappepcs]

I'm cheering it. There are quite a few folks in the world that can neither attend the school, or afford it if they could attend physically. That said, they would love to have Stanford class material to learn from as part of their hobby ambitions. Hobbyists notoriously have a zero dollar budget and a zest for learning stuff. Even if it seems unlikely that you'd see Starbucks' employees logging on for a lecture during their lunch break, it's possible.

Anything that educational institutes can do to generally raise the engineering awareness and savvy of the population is fulfilling their mission in a broad sense. I'm fully going to do these courses. I have more time than spare coin at the moment, and Stanford level courses are appreciated. Even if I got credit for them it would not affect my paycheck. What I know, and what I have accomplished do more to shape that number than anything I might have learned in school. When you are 24 that piece of paper is very important. When you put 10+ years on that, people are far more concerned with what you have done since graduation. Adding additional studies to your resume might sound hokey, but it shows what a lot of people want to see... effort, desire, and staying in-career with your interests.

You might be a Windows system admin, but you only get to be a hero when you can also work on that new machine that the marketing guy set up and is now not working. Oh, yeah, it runs Linux. Specialists are passe' and the more you know how to deal with, the better you will deal with any one part of it. Continuing education is not a joke, and even this counts.

Re:OpenSource University?

[Rakishi]

The problem is that, if your family makes $101,000, you're fucked.

No you're not, you simply have to pay more than zero but not much more.

That's all, of course, assuming you can get past their impossibly-high admissions standards.

It's an elite school and the requirements are far from impossible given that people get in. Just because you couldn't make it in doesn't make it impossible. There are plenty of other schools with lower requirements including state schools and so on (granted you'd amusingly enough possibly pay more at said state schools).

$chool

[Dgawld]

American Universities should be "open source", or at least 50% cheaper. Even then the average private school would still cost an average total of $80,000 USD (not including books, and the required spending money)

Re:MIT has many more...

[hax0r_this]

Yes, but no one goes to school for an education, they go to school for a degree. I'm not saying thats how it should be, but thats just the sad truth of this country. I can go through and learn that material, same as a student at Stanford, I could outscore them on the test, but in the end they will get the job and I will be on the street because they paid.

Re:MIT has many more...

[Man On Pink Corner]

I don't know. If I had a choice between hiring somebody who got a 4-year BSEE the usual way, versus somebody who couldn't afford school but who instead downloaded all the lectures and book .PDFs and absorbed equivalent knowledge from those, I'd take the autodidact any day of the week. That's how you hire the next Wozniak.

IQ bell curve

[eagl]

As slashdotters go ape over this sort of thing, one fact should be kept in mind...

Slashdotters are largely made up of people on the far right side of the bell curve distribution of intelligence. Although our current federal government refuses to acknowledge that half of the people are "below average" and insists that everyone would benefit from a college education, the fact is that only a minority of people are actually capable of benefitting from the kind of advanced education Stanford can provide. The vast majority of people would be much better served with an education focused on practical application of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the last couple thousand years.

How many slashdotters actually associate on a daily basis with people who would have to stretch to achieve a 100 score on an IQ test? I would submit that very few of "us" associate regularly with "them", and therefore our attitudes towards the desirable nature of higher education is heavily biased by our own capabilities. A great number of people simply can not benefit by any level of exposure to a Stanford provided higher education, no matter what the cost or ease of access.

We need to temper our response to these programs, and especially temper our response to government programs that attempt to force higher education goals onto the masses, by the realization that an awful lot of people would get a lot more out of a more practical approach to education instead of the current myth that everyone can earn an advanced degree if they were only given a fair shot. The average person couldn't graduate from Stanford no matter how fair of a shot they were given... That's why Stanford graduates are expected to rise above the average and achieve beyond the norm.

Re:IQ bell curve

[daemonburrito]

We need to temper our response to these programs [...]

Why?

What a strange response. I've read your comment three times now, and I still don't get it. That is, I don't get it because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; it seems like you're advocating for long-dead Social Darwinist tripe. But that couldn't possibly be the case, as you are one of those on the "right" side of the curve, right?

You act as if this is your Harrison Bergeron fantasy (in which you are the protagonist, of course). This isn't the government forcing Stanford to admit cretins! It's just a school sharing part of their curricula on the web.

If "you" are a member of "us", count me as a member of "them".

Yay Stanford. Using the web to its potential for making civilization a little better for all of us. What's not to like? And what would we possibly have to gain by preventing people from learning?

Re:IQ bell curve

[eagl]

Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.

A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.

One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.

That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.

Re:IQ bell curve

[eagl]

I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level. We must recognize that 50% of students are below average, and the education we offer them must be applicable to their future, not some fairy-tale future where everyone can pass differential equations and get a degree in aero engineering if they only had a fair chance. Guess what - even really smart people fail out of engineering degrees, and it is grossly unfair to the 50% "below average" people to force them into college prep courses.

Our enthusiasm for the ability to audit Stanford courses for free is understandable, but we really should temper our response with the realization that there are a ton of people failing high school algebra right now that would benefit a lot more by being offered some technical courses that lead to jobs instead of online engineering or comp sci courses they can't possibly understand.

I'm trying to not point fingers here, but the "no child left behind" program explicitly ignores the fact that not all students are equally capable, and that 50% of students are below average. These kids need to be offered programs that give them the education they need to succeed in LIFE, not an education they can't understand in order to prepare them for a college education they can't possibly graduate or benefit from.

Those who go to Stanford with a reasonable expectation to graduate have already far surpassed the cut line - they are far on the right side of the bell curve, and it's very tough to imagine living life on the other side of the curve, let alone imagine what sort of education those people would benefit from. They need knowledge that leads to a JOB, not college prep courses or free Stanford engineering courses.

Re:IQ bell curve

[daemonburrito]

I bet you say that to all the nerds... ;)

I share some of your opinions, but I arrived at them from a different place. I've never feared greater access, but I have been saddened by our system's failures. I think these failures are more complex than the paradox of Lake Wobegon's test scores, though. Whatever the failures are, and whatever the details of the failures, it seems to me like putting material on the web is an excellent bypass.

I think that the missing great students are still a bigger problem than an abundance of under-equipped students. Coping with some more of the latter is worth it to catch more of the former. In any case, putting this material on the web can feed the lonely minds of those that didn't make it, for reasons other than lack of intelligence.

I totally agree with you about providing more of what you called application-level education; both for the lives of those who just need to learn a trade, and for the institutions who could put more effort into theoretical considerations. But I also get serious warm-and-fuzzies thinking about all humanity being able to access stuff like this someday.

Re:IQ bell curve

[WetFreud]

What??? I'm not exited because we can finally force graduate level engineering courses on the American masses. I'm exited because there may be someone in rural Sir Lanka or Cameroon or wherever else who can use this to make me a flying car. And I'm excited because in a few minutes I'll start watching my third Stanford CS course on the bus on my way to work. And I live in Norway.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Dishevel]

It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.

Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.

Umm.... Whoosh...Really

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Duffy13]

Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.

In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.

I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.

In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[RockoTDF]

*cough* Java *cough*

rant: I hate Java so much. Don't waste my time with GUIs, 10 years from now swing won't frigging matter. Some of us aren't going to be software engineers dammit! MIT has been using Lisp in some form for ages, I wish every other school in the country would take a page out of their book. Even Caltech teaches Java as their main language, which is surprising. My ideal curriculum would start with a semester of Python just to get students familiar with how programming works without worrying about the intricacies of a specific language. Then after that do Lisp or C/C++. Anything but Java.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[oldhack]

Kid, we don't pay the fortune for fancy college's teaching materials, we pay the fortune for their paper with their stamp on it. Welcome to the real life.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[randomc0de]

Lisp and Scheme are useless for learning Computer Science. There is one topic they can be used for - functional programming. This is not a useless topic, but it is not Computer Science. Data structures, compiler design, operating system design - all of these require vastly different languages than purely functional ones.

C and Java are extremely powerful, robust languages. With just them you can do OOP, functional programming (what do you think the Lisp compiler is written in...), complex data structures, essentially anything. Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, and Erlang are domain-specific languages for domain-specific tasks. They should absolutely be taught, but only in certain courses. Computer Science departments must teach concepts, and those require languages flexible enough to express different paradigms.

Finally, I apologize for actually using "paradigm" in a sentence. It's just the only word that fits.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Metasquares]

Very much like life, there is a default purpose and a self-determined purpose to a university experience.

Going to a university solely for the degree is like living solely for the purpose of having kids: you'd fulfill the purpose the system set out for you, but you'd miss out on any chance at developing and expressing your own goals.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[ultranova]

My ideal curriculum would start with a semester of Python just to get students familiar with how programming works without worrying about the intricacies of a specific language.

No. Start them up with Basic - and I mean the good old line-number one, not one of these new ones with procedures. Once their programs grow beyond the point where GOTO is practical, introduce the concepts of procedures and stack; then show how these can be managed automatically by the computer in, for example, C. Then wait again for the programs grow to spaghetti stage before introducing objects, automatic memory management, etc.

If you start with a modern language like Python, the students will never really understand why it has the features it has, because they've never run into the problems those features are intended to solve.

Then after that do Lisp or C/C++. Anything but Java.

Do you have some rational basis for your hatred for Java, or is it just a matter of taste ?

Re:I'd be pissed.

[TerranFury]

Trust me, this will in no way cheapen a Stanford degree. In fact, it will only generate more publicity for the school, and so increase its prestige (a little. It's up there to begin with.)

(IANAWSIAW = I am not affiliated with Stanford in any way.)

Re:Hmm....

[TooMuchToDo]

So if I take the local community college welding classes levels 1-4 (which I am, just because I'd like to learn Mig/Tig/Oxyacetylene welding/cutting) but don't take the final examination where they rate my work, I can't say I've studied the material? If the material is online, you've studied it, and have it down cold, than just like in most cases, the degree/transcript doesn't matter.

Spirit of a true university

[engun]

This is in the spirit of a true university. A university is "supposed" to be a place for learning and furthering the knowledge acquired by humanity, not a money making scam or a means of positioning yourself in the dominance hierarchy.

I'm glad that whatever the motivation, education is being opened up to bright, eager people who can't get access to the same quality of teaching as in Stanford/MIT etc. ADUni was also an attempt to do this same thing and really deserves kudos.

Hope more comprehensive lecture material (including video lectures) are released eventually for other subjects too. Why fleece students when good universities can always earn money via grants and patents.

Re:What a load of BS (CS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to miss the joke.

Re:I'd be pissed.

[Timothy Brownawell]

Wait, so university is about credits and not about *learning*!?

I think it's more about verified learning. When they give you course credits or a degree, they're saying "we know that Anonymous Coward is at least somewhat competent at X". And while knowledge may be free, verifying someone's level of knowledge takes work (if done right), and is rather expensive (partly because they can, partly because they need money just like everyone else).

Re:I'd be pissed.

[SilverJets]

The people paying get a degree. The people taking the free courses don't.

Do you get angry when you buy a book and then find out your local library loans the same title out for free?