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Stanford's Free Computer Science Courses
mikejuk writes "Stanford University is offering the online world more of its undergraduate level CS courses. These free courses consist of You Tube videos with computer-marked quizzes and programming assignments. The ball had been started rolling by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig's free online version of their Stanford AI class, for which they hoped to reach an audience in the order of a hundred thousand, a target which they seem to have achieved. As well as the previously announced Machine learning course you can now sign up to any of: Computer Science 101, Software as a Service, Human-Computer Interaction, Natural Language Processing, Game Theory, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Cryptography and Design and Analysis of Algorithms. Almost a complete computer science course and they are adding more. Introductory videos and details are available from each courses website."
With the power of the internet and technology rapidly replacing traditional classrooms and workplaces, this seems to be the most cost effective and efficient way to educate those who are young. When employment is no longer an incentive for going to college, we have to find ways to provide education or our entire country (And the world) will suffer when we have a nation of troglodytes.
now if only they would start giving free degrees... then people couldn't complain when they ended up w/McJobs
-I'm just sayin'
I'm taking the AI class right now. While there are constraints on the complexity of questions they can ask and what they can expect to teach online, it's still very interesting. At the very least it presents an involved beginners guide as a starting point in this field.
I've never taken any other online courses, but having quizes mixed into the lectures is a really good idea. Makes you really think about the material as you are going through it.
This is the way education should be, available to anyone with an interest. MIT has a similar program with content freely available I believe: http://ocw.mit.edu/ . IMHO this is what libraries will eventually evolve into. This type of knowledge sharing is the root of a libraries books are about, and getting that content from the expert source in the field is hard to beat. Definitely cool stuff.
You get all the knowledge of a Stanford CS graduate without having to spend 4 years in Palo Alto.
Registration for the current AI course is closed, but I'm sure they'll be running it again. Also you can see the lectures on youtube.
Now I just wish they'd find a way to make it possible to receive credit in those courses. Would be great to substitute one of the lower core CSCI courses with an online version from Stanford.
high edu should not be a piece of paper to get a job and even then lot's of IT jobs need more hands on learning and less class room theory!
I can't find the P.E. or the basket weaving courses anywhere.
I believe this will be helpful for many that are willing to learn but can't go to a university (for a variety of reasons). Teenagers that want to go ahead and learn more and faster than what their high-school teaches them will be able to do so, at a low cost. Those who simply want to expand their knowledge will also be able to do so at a low cost and in a flexible time.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Has anyone had any success using these for course credit at another university?
I submitted some of the homeworks close to the deadline hour and even then the Youtube videos registered at most 3000 views and am guessing the average is 2000 views.
These might also be of interest:
http://www.venture-class.org/
http://www.launchpad-class.org/
There's also a Civ E and a EE class.
I taught myself CS better than Stanford teaches, and I expect many others can do so, too.
What I can't do myself is teach myself history as well as it's taught by Harvard to the people who go out and run the world. When does that go online? And not some faked version for the masses - the same version that Harvard grads learned and were graded on.
--
make install -not war
IRC!
If I'm totally lost on some problem I open IRC (freenode-server) and usually it takes less than 15 minutes to get an answer and a solution.
In a world without fences and walls, who needs gates and windows?
From utexas.edu:
Estimated Total Cost of Undergraduate Education (Fall 2010 - Spring 2011) Texas resident on-campus $23,596 - 24,936 Texas resident off-campus $23,734 - 25,074 Non-resident on-campus $35,776 - 45,960 Non-resident off-campus $35,914 - 46,098
This is a tax-supported state school, although probably one of the more expensive ones.
"In 2011-12, public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 in tuition and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at these institutions is $12,526. Private nonprofit four-year colleges charge, on average, $28,500 per year in tuition and fees."
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html
I can't find the link right now but when room and board is considered I believe the average cost of a 4-year college or university is $13 per year.
Of course, it's hard to feel bed for someone who can't get a job based on their BA degree in 'History', or 'art lit'. Seriously, their great programs, but how many time have you seen 'History' major wanted listed on craigslist?
All degree holders are employable, just not necessarily in their fields of study. I once sat in on a presentation named something like careers for history majors. Basically the speaker said that many jobs require a 4-year degree, any degree will do. Typically these are entry level managements jobs.
Keep in mind that while a degree demonstrates some level of knowledge in a particular field, it also demonstrates the ability to complete a long, boring and bureaucratic process. There is value in the later.
The link to the crypto class sends you to www.cs101-class.org. You have to guess the real url, www.crypto-class.org.
Actually, this is way better than being in a lecture hall, trying to learn on a schedule. I have been watching Leonard Susskind's lectures on Quantum Mechanics. I found I needed to review a few things, then decided to drop back to the Quantum Entanglements class first. Grabbed a notebook, and now I have about 10 pages of notes on that.
Rewind and pause are amazing. As is the ability to use my android to watch the lectures on the bus, going back and forth to work.
Schools practically invented the internet, yet they seem to be the last ones to embrace it for actually teaching students. With today's technology, an entire class should be able to interact with an instructor in completely online sessions. Imagine going to school without having to leave the house. Some schools (like U of Phoenix) offer degrees but for only a very few majors. And then they get ridiculed for not being "a real school". WTF?
I just watched a number of the course previews for a variety of the online professional development courses from Stanford as I was seriously thinking about doing one of their certificates. I also checked out ClassX, which has some classes on it. I'm having second thoughts because I fear I'll be bored to death by the experience. I've been out of university almost 20 years, but it's clear that they haven't changed much and the flow of information from instructor to student is agonizingly slow. Maybe I'm spoiled, but these lectures are essentially academic death-by-powerpoint experiences or even worse, death-by-writing ... very .... slowly ... on ... the board experiences. Just taking a Standford (or any other) lecture, slapping it on the web and putting even a fancy control UI like ClassX has is just not good enough. I think the courses have to be completely redone with online learning in mind. And if they were really well done, then I'd bet lectures would end up being the *last* place you'd want to go to for the course.
Here's some tips for improving on the online UI experience (for Stanford people if they read this):
1. Add a Skip Forward 30s/Back 10s control, because the instructor often dithers around on non-educational topics.(Copy Tivo/Dish/etc.)
2. Enable the video to be viewed faster than real time. I can easily process 2x speech or higher and the instructors often speak slowly. There's no need to force onliners to listen at 1:1. (Like Livescribe Pen desktop playback or software DVD players)
3. Have the instructor repeat the comment/question from the audience for the microphone - it's a classic problem, but they need to do it.
4. Add in chapters for each topic - this will enable us to skip to the next point/slide should the instructor belabor the point - okay I get it! (Livescribe pen / available on some ClassX content)
5. A number of times, the instructors mentioned how questions couldn't be asked by the online participants, but this isn't true. If the video is surrounded with a forum UI then viewers will easily be able to ask questions and a TA or the Professor can answer later - or other students could. (Like Hulu/YouTube/etc) Partially implemented.
6. Allow bookmarking/resume on the videos because it'd be really useful (like BBC iPlayer/Hulu)
Maybe Stanford's real online system has these functions, but if not, they should. Based on the cost of the courses, you'd think they could have a decent system banged out pronto.
Cliff
I am a physics student, so none of this is directly my field. But we have a lot of computer-related courses here, so I decided to improve upon them and started watching Machine Learning. The videos were interesting, although their level was more suitable for high school, but I thought that's just for the intros.
Then the first assignment came. I wrote a blog post comparing this course with another one at my university (of Ljubljana, Slovenia). Basically, the assignment from Stanford was 15 pages of instructions to write four lines of code. Yes, you read that right: all the framework code was there, all I had to do was write a linear function in Octave. On the other hand, Slovene physics student are expected to produce all their own code, and around 10 pages of reports with graphs and formulas, every week. And we only get one page of instructions, specifying only the problem, and leaving the tool and the solutions to the students. Both assignments are linked to in the blog post.
Seeing the course takes too much time to read through and doesn't teach me anything, I quit after the second assignment. Maybe it got harder since then, but I didn't really have time to check.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
I quit after the first week.
http://www.reddit.com/r/aiclass/comments/lm6c8/suggestion_for_the_teachers_teach_the_method_then/
The teachers may be brilliant in their field, but they suck as educators.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
I find it a little ironic that your error-ridden post advocates less classroom theory. "lot's" doesn't mean anything and should be "lots"; it's "hands-on", not "hands on"; it's "classroom", not "class room"; and your statement should really be two sentences, rather than one with two halves smashed together with an "and" thrown between.
(To be clear, I'm not judging the content of your post--I don't have enough experience with IT education to pass judgement--I'm just commenting on its irony.)
i want an exam, and only, the exam to a certificate... no professors, no lectures, no homework, just a test... if i pass this, then they may charge me to prove my worth with practical things in the labs... and then some more certificates... like redhat, for example...
I liked the guy commenting on the usefulness of PhDs the other day using "then" instead of "than". Actually, I hated that, but I liked the irony.
which is totally what she said
I find it a little ironic that your smug-ridden post entirely fail to understand what the post you replied to were saying.
First off, I would point out that "lot's" does indeed mean something, in this case it's of course a shorthand for "parking lot's" - which clearly shows that the author meant that today's education lacked enough knowledge and experience to fill several parking lot's.
Further on, the gentleman was unambigiously also requesting a more educational focus on Hands-on computing, which is, regrettably, sorely lacking in today's cold society.
And last, but surely not least, with "class room theory" he was directly referring to the fact that today's students learn these newfangled "class based" langages, like for example Java and C#. It's quite clear he requests some real languages to be taught instead, like Assembly, C, Fortran and Perl.
So there you have it, old chap. Quite an embaressing failure on your part there, I'd say. You are indeed lucky to have such wonderful people like me to highlight and educate you in your errors.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
From a purely grammatical point, "lots" would be the plural of "lot", so the second half of that statement is kind of amusing.
The word "lot's" would have to be possessive ("that lot's grade runs downhill and to the left") or contractive ("that lot's for sale") .
Plurals aren't done with " 's ".
Sorry, but "parking lot's" as you've described it isn't valid usage.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hey i tried to subscribe but i didnt recieve any confirmation e-mail or anything.. just filled my name & e-mail on their website
Why aren't you using the Oxford comma?
Ahh Slashdot... one of the few places left on the internet I can count on to find people who care about proper grammar. :-)
Keep fighting the good fight, my comrades!
"lot's" doesn't mean anything
Sure it does:
Lot's a word I use a lot.
Makes perfect grammatical sense.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Hah, thank you for that. You've converted me--I clearly did not understand the original post.
Posting AC so as not to seem pretentious.
I'm currently taking all three courses. Having a bit more structure than "here are some videos and PDFs of problem sets" seems to be crucial to actually making it through a course for a lot of people, myself included. Moreover, the professors involved in each course are technically prominent (I knew who Widom, Ng, Norvig, and Thrun were years before taking these) and are at least minimally pedogogically competent; they are thus ahead of a large fraction of university lecturers.
I might criticize various aspects of how the courses are offered and operated, but the biggest problem is that they are simply far too easy. I realize Stanford has always had a reputation as an easy school (or has for the past 40 years, at least), and these courses are undoubtedly a step down from their regular on-campus equivalents, but it's subtly irritating to be in a course that's too easy. It leaves one with a dilemma: figure out what the course ought to have been, and make up for the deficiency oneself, or else risk achieving a sort of false competency, and find out just how little has been learnt when one moves on.
I had this problem at the undistinguished state university I attended (whose classes were much, much more difficult than these online ones), and discovered that an "A" doesn't equate to mastery when I got into more difficult subjects.
These free online courses could be greatly improved throught the addition of homework problems that take more than twenty seconds to solve, and programming exercises that have one pulling one's hair out at 1AM the night before they're due, rather than left wondering what else to add to the exercise to make it minimally interesting. Perhaps this could be done by having a (real) "advanced" track for the courses.
Perhaps I'm out of touch with today's students, or my objectives simply do not align with those of the people offering these courses, but I feel like this was a bit of a missed opportunity. Having structured course material that is viable for independent study could be incredibly valuable; as it is, it feels a little loose and incomplete.
This is amazing
I like how no one understands the meaning of irony.
Including you, it seems.
which is totally what she said
I adamantly disagree. I have completed the Introduction to Machine Learning lectures and course homework assignments. The class, as an INTRODUCTORY course, does an exceptional job of integrating theory and practice. The learning-by-doing methodology helps the student to apply the lecture materials. Yes, perhaps some of the INITIAL assignments appear to result in "minimal code." However, as in excellent writing, paring the assignments to four lines (or an efficient code set) requires significant editing, understanding of the concepts, and familiarity with the prototyping tool (GNU Octave in this case). Thus, the student, initially, applies not only machine learning principles but is also gaining familiarity with an initially arcane (albeit excellent) coding tool. The later assignments do offer more complex coding opportunities and do offer charting, graphing, and analysis. These courses, as is my understanding and I think made clear in the course offerings, are intended to make available exceptional instructors to a wide variety of learners--from persons with no computer science (or even high-level math) backgrounds to experienced learners with an interest in the topic. The courses act as a catalyst for further self-study (for those of us who like an introduction so we can pursue further in-depth study). Furthermore, I think it is unfair to Stanford for others to classify these classes as "Stanford courses." As the materials make clear, these are not "Stanford courses" but __parallel__ Stanford courses. No credit is offered or suggested by Stanford. Apparently, tens of thousands have signed up for these courses. I am ecstatic about future offerings as are many.
Wow, apparently there is a brand new CS 101 course, which has never existed before! Taught using Python, no less!
I expect good things from it - Nick Parlante is a fine instructor - but I also expect that it may have a number of bugs since it appears that it's the first time that CS 101 has been taught
Currently, CS 106(A) is the introductory course, or 105 for a non-majors/JavaScript class.
CS 106 is great - one of the most popular classes at the school, and with good reason!
Although much of the goodness of CS 106 comes from the support structure - notably tutorials and interactive grading with the section leaders - the lectures and assignments are definitely worthwhile. The goal of CS 106 is that anyone who a) has a pulse and b) does the work will learn the material and pass the class - an approach which I'd like to see in more introductory engineering (and science) courses. (a) is optional, actually.