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."

Comments

Re:Future of education

[geekoid]

Employment should have never been the incentive for going to college. Learning should have been.

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?

Re:100,000?

[Tasha26]

It's just like posting a Youtube video in Facebook or embedding it in a blog. Those views get counted too. Also the more ambiguous the video, the higher is its view count!

Re:A step on the good direction.

[digsbo]

I twisted my office mate's arm to take the Database course. He's a web designer with a print layout background, and has been trying to get into programming to expand career options (he's maxed out as a designer).

The class has been hugely challenging and rewarding for him - he's not had math above Algebra II before, and that was over 30 years ago, so it's hard, but he is starting to truly understand SQL instead of just guessing, and he's understanding the concepts of abstract types, formal grammars, and so on.

Really a tremendous improvement over the video lectures and static course materials offered from other online courses. The quizzes and interactive exercises are superb. I can't say enough about the class, and will be bashing his head in to take the intro to CS class.

Re:100,000?

[mrchaotica]

Also the more ambiguous the video, the higher is its view count!

LOL! That's a great observation; I hope they use that to help evaluate their lecture quality.

Now, here's a question: is the view count heuristic admissible? ; )

Re:Future of education

[Somecallmechief]

In my opinion, education falls into one of two buckets: either you espouse to the Social Security mentality in which someone else is "solving the problem" or you are proactively engaged in "solving the problem" for yourself. It's unfortunate that at a societal level the evaluation of an individual's of education operates out of a black box not dissimilar to the evaluation of an individual's credit score. The solution isn't necessarily to make it easier to validate input/output from the black box. Rather, we can employ other methodologies for validating individual aptitude. The question is fundamentally about hiring. It is true that the process of studying and obtaining a degree from specific institutions for specific fields has a measurable, objective, and positive outcome for a limited number of students; however, this is by far the edge case. With limited exceptions, doctors, lawyers and politicians climb into careers without formal training and nationally accepted stamps of approval on degrees. But this is the edge. In reality, there is very little business value in even including a degree criteria for job positioning/hiring. It deters those who are qualified but do not hold a degree, and it does nothing to guarantee even a low bar for the work ethic, aptitude or drive of the applicant. Nothing matters more than the answers to these questions: "What do you know?", "How long have you known it?" and "How have you employed that knowledge?". While Stanford's experiment is great, it is no better than than the Khan Academy or any other resource which disseminates knowledge--and the output is the same: the individual's who devote themselves to the task of learning will derive benefit, but that outcome is wholly unquantifiable to employers evaluating applicants.

All degree holders are employable

[perpenso]

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.

Re:All degree holders are employable

[scottbomb]

I think it's just an easy way for the HR people to say, "Yep, Sally can read, write, and do basic math. We know because she has a college degree." It's a hell of a lot easier than testing everyone who applies. Thanks to the modern public school system using "social promotion" and graduating everyone who doesn't drop out, employers have no idea who they're looking at when you walk in the door. Years ago, a high school diploma actually meant something. Nowadays, in the spirit of "inclusiveness" and self-esteem-masturbation, the standards have fallen far from where they were, say, 50 years ago. If you need proof, try reading a book written in the 1800s. The grammar and vocabulary was far more complex. What we now call "college-level reading" was 6th-grade material back then.

Re:All degree holders are employable

[FrootLoops]

the standards have fallen far from where they were, say, 50 years ago. If you need proof, try reading a book written in the 1800s.

Actually, you may have provided some proof yourself by implying that content in a 200-year-old book proves that standards have fallen in the last 50 years--unless you're in your seventies, I suppose.

In all seriousness, though, I would like to see some proof that educational standards have dropped in the last 50 years

I somewhat agree with your point about material from centuries ago, though it seems to me that rote memorization was much more common in the past. Many of the questions on this purported "8th Grade Examination from late 1800's" are superficially impressive, but really amount to rather useless memorization:

Give the epochs into which U. S. History is divided.
Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall & Orinoco.

The arithmetic section I linked mostly consists of unit conversions, which are again superficially impressive. In 8th grade my classmates were covering conic sections, which are less "mechanical" than plugging numbers in to conversion formulas, and I would say they're more difficult. Oddly enough, in this UPenn catalog from 1852, conic sections were a junior level (in college) topic. To be fair, that catalog also lists basic calculus (I imagine the equivalent of Calc 1 and 2) in addition to a dizzying number of topics on history, philosophy, Greek, Latin, "natural philosophy", and chemistry.

Today, there's just far too much information to absorb. Learning how to understand things quickly as they come up is more important than memorizing small chunks of human knowledge, even if it's less impressive. Perhaps students in the past were more studious as well, though things aren't all bad.

Re:high edu should not be a piece of paper to get

[FrootLoops]

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.)