Slashdot Mirror
More Stanford Computing Courses Go Free
mikejuk writes "Following on the recent Slashdot item on the availability of a free Stanford AI course there is news that two other Stanford Computer Science courses are also joining in this 'bold experiment in distributed education' in which students not only have access to lecture videos and other course materials but will actively participate by submitting assignments and getting regular feedback on their progress. The subjects are Machine Learning with Andrew Ng and Database with Jennifer Widom. This open approach looks as if it might be a success with well over 100,000 prospective students signing up to the AI course alone."
Online education is ok, but there's no substitute for being able to ask questions in realtime and address issues with an actual teacher.
However, its good practice for post-graduation education, where you're lucky if you've got google and possibly an oreilly book.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think it would be bad business to spend time and money educating a person just to have them buy the degree from somewhere else.
Umm, no. Not in this case, or in any of the "elite" universities that offer such free materials. Those universities have many more students than they could possibly want dying to get in and pay them tuition. It is not bad business, because they have set the size of their "customer" pool, and the number of prospective customers is larger than the size they have set.
Besides, buying the degree somewhere else is pretty useless. Completion of the courses in TFA will not get you credit:
Online students who successfully complete their chosen course will receive a statement of accomplishment from the instructor, which will include information on how well you did and how your performance compared to other online students. Only students admitted to Stanford and enrolled in the regular course can receive credit or a grade, so this is not a Stanford certificate.
In other words, you get a gold star and perhaps the ability to say that you did better than X% of hundreds of thousands of other slackers. No credential.
See how far you get with a prospective employer by saying, "I know my degree is from Upper Bucksnort State Teachers College, but I've completed free courses through private study in MIT's opencourseware and I have a gold star form letter from Stanford saying that it is not an official record from Stanford, but I did better than 80% of people who probably didn't put in much effort for no credit either."
College degrees are only useful for getting you in the door to your first job or two. An elite name gets more attention in most cases. Offering free "unofficial" Stanford gold stars to anonymous internet folks is not going to dilute Stanford's ability to make money or to place its own graduates.
Learning and education. Highly contentious topics infused with politics and the corrupting influence of money sloshing around the system (e.g., textbooks, student loans, tuition fees).
Humanity has passed knowledge on for millennia and what's required is a willing student and a knowledgeable, savvy, patient, rigorous teacher. What our American and British institutions of higher education really are trying to achieve is the ability to instruct the maximum quantity of people at the lowest possible cost with a reasonable degree of effectiveness as measured by testing scores/graduation rates.
I think the open publishing of these courses and course materials is a wonderful thing that could possibly enhance mass literacy and allow curious people access to the finest knowledge pool in the world. It's what a global network should be about: to freely connect people thirsty for knowledge with all the information humanity has accumulated.
After working on technology in higher education for 11 years, I sometimes think all we're doing is tinkering around the edges and using technology as a distraction from addressing the real challenges in educating humanity.