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MIT To Expand Online Learning and Offer Certificates
mikejuk writes "MIT has announced an online learning initiative that will offer its courses through a new interactive learning platform that will enable students to participate in simulated labs, interact with professors and other students and earn certificates. Is this just a reaction to the Stanford experiment in running courses complete with exams and informal statements of accomplishment? (The first AI course has just finished and the exam results are in.) If so let's hope it spurs other educational establishments to do the same!"
People are always ranting about RIAA/MPAA while what they should really be worrying about is lecture book publishers. Music and movies are just entertainment, but these book publishers are preventing education and others from learning.
Book publishers are going to be crying about online learning and courses if they can't get their books required for them. They are already doing all kinds of shady monopoly deals and trying to hinder reselling of books by updating their course material almost every year, resulting in incompatible books for classes. I'm sure that if they cannot get their books forced in other ways, they're going to be doing some suing or forcing schools to shut down these online learning courses.
I'm not sure why people cry so much about RIAA and MPAA when there is such an assholish industry preventing people from learning. That has real results on whole advancement of humankind.
University of Phoenix has been doing this for years.
Since my day job is CS professor, these kinds of things aren't in my personal interest (unless I land a tenured job at MIT, which is unlikely :P), but I think they have considerable merit. CS, compared to other fields, is already a little bit ambivalent about degrees, and you can get some kinds of jobs by having alternate demonstrations of knowledge, like your Github "resume", or track record of participation in open-source projects. But a lot of companies worry that without a degree you'll lack some theoretical knowledge that will eventually bite you in the ass, because you didn't realize that something was a well-studied problem with an off-the-shelf solution you could've pulled out of one of Knuth's books and implemented, instead of rolling your own buggier, worse one (sometimes this is a founded fear, other times not).
But the bar in many cases is not that high. Even when I've looked for people to work with on, say, a machine-learning project, what I want to know is that they're familiar with the basics of statistics, common techniques and gotchas, correct and incorrect methods of data analysis, etc. This is more likely if they have a degree with some statistics and/or ML courses, but I could see a certificate from a respected course of online instruction being enough to convince me of that, if they keep standards up and it's not easy to cheat.
On the learner's side, it's a really interesting space of possibilities for mixing-and-matching your own education. Since these certificates seem to be much finer granularity than degree programs, if they proliferate and maintain quality, you could more realistically do interdisciplinary programs of study while still being able to prove that you mastered specific things.
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Somewhat misquoted
MIT ... will enable students to ... earn certificates.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219
Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the Institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.
So you'll get a cert from "Internet-U" stating you watched a video.
BTW the OCW calculus video series rocks as a refresher course. HIGHLY recommended. I wish they had video for more than just their 100 level intro courses.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I love it when the words stanford and experiment are used in a sentence, it gets so much better when the word prison is also added.
When are we getting college degree programs not tied to a campus. I want to enroll at Midwest States University. Take some courses at Illinois State some at the University of Kentucky, some at University of Tennessee, and graduate with a BA after 4 years.
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It's interesting to see how the state of learning has changed in the last 10 years, and the pace of change is accelerating.
Does anyone know why we study the subjects we do in high school? Mostly it's because the subjects are classical - things are studied because it's been that way since ancient times.
Take geometry, for example. It's an important subject, but not nearly as useful to the average person as probability, yet we study one and not the other.
Then there's the mode of teaching, several hundred years old, where the student sits quietly in a seat watching the lecturer write things on a board and explain them.
Newer models have emerged. The Kahn academy still uses the lecturer/blackboard model, but improves it in many ways. The video can be viewed at a time of the student's choosing, parts can be rewound and replayed, and most importantly: the lectures can be improved by redoing them.
The Stanford and MIT online courses are just another example of the changing landscape. The Stanford AI course had lots of technical problems that they were unprepared for - ambiguous English phrasing, uneven level of practice versus test, missing technical explanations, and so on.
Despite the problems, they will get better. Indeed, they will get a lot better even the 2nd time they give the course.
We're apparently watching a competition for "esteem" between the top end universities. The colleges are competing for clarity of presentation, comprehension, and usefulness of the data.
In 10 years or so the traditional university model will be gone. There will be no need to go to college when all the standard subjects can be learned very well online, using methods which have evolved to present the material in the best possible way.
It'll be fun to watch as this evolves over time.
University of Phoenix is online + some class room.
Of giving the skills need to do IT job's. People with theoretical knowledge / paper MSCE's lack real skills that are needed on the job and some times even in a CS they don't even cover a lot stuff that is covered in a tech school. Now with ambivalent about degrees why not have apprenticeships for IT jobs? or at least make them part of the tech schools. I talking about a REAL apprenticeships like how other skills jobs have them.
Oddly enough, that's what Technical Institutes were intended to be, which is why they have a different name than University, which was more the classic lectures+reading style of education. A.N. Whitehead, better known for his philosophy but also somewhat of an educational theorist, was a big fan of that style of early-20th-century education.
Schools like MIT, Georgia Tech, and even the rather evocatively named Colorado School of Mines have more or less converged to a university model of education, though, I'd guess partly because disciplines got more and more complex to the point where there was significant theory (e.g. engineering today is more about mathematics and less about hands-on work with steel than it was in 1910), and partly for prestige reasons.
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I'd guess partly because disciplines got more and more complex to the point where there was significant theory (e.g. engineering today is more about mathematics and less about hands-on work with steel than it was in 1910), and partly for prestige reasons.
Mostly financial reasons. My home town has a tech school, a state extension public U, and a tiny more than 150 year old psuedo-religious private U (psuedo-religious in that I attended for a year and it was religious in that you had to take "a" religion or philosophy class to graduate, but it was not religious in that it only grants doctor of divinity degrees)
The tech school was affordable nearly full time on full time minimum wage and only offered per credit hour classes. The public extension U was about twice the cost per credit hour OR "full time" tuition at 12 or more credits cost the same as about 20 credits. The expensive little private U was about twice the cost per credit of the public U but "full time" tuition at 12 or more credits was bonkers crazy far over 20 individual credits something like $10K/semester after all the full time student fees last time I checked.
So you can quadruple your income by changing from a "tech school" to a "private university", roughly. And the govt will backstop all the loans, so there is no reason not to raise prices to the roof, once it changes from a "cash transaction" to a "long term govt guaranteed debt transaction".
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I never attended high-school (I went to vocational school and then started my engineering studies) so I never got to study those interesting-sounding subjects like psychology and philosophy. Now that all the most famous universities have been putting their introductory courses online, I've watched quite a few of them.
When I was watching Introduction to Psychology (Prof. Paul Bloom, Yale, extremely interesting and entertaining way to spend some 20-odd hours) I thought "Hell, I could actually do more than watch these lectures. I think I'll actually buy the book and read the recommended chapters!".
The course book costed something like 150+ dollars, which I thought was astounding but that actually wasn't the showstopper for me (I have a job and am quite prone to buying stuff on a whim in my sleep-deprivation induced mania). What made me pissed off was that they (=every store I could find by googling the book) didn't sell an electronic version of the book. What made me more pissed was that they clearly had electronic version: If I were to buy the physical book, I would get the PDF on CD with the book. There simply was no way of buying just the PDF (I would have been willing to accept DRM, to pay the full price, whatever... I just didn't want to wait a week, spend a phonecall arguing with customs officers, pay another 30 bucks for shipping, another 30 bucks of import taxes, etc. as is usually the case when I order stuff online).
In the end, I was annoyed that the stores selling the book could have made my life easier but had chosen not to, so I didn't buy the book. However, open courses like these cause large amounts of people like me to consider buying books that we never would have otherwise bought. If the industry can implement minor reforms to approach us a bit, I'm sure there's a lot of potential for more profit.
I... somewhat in between "MIT Certification" and "Internet-U Certification". They're trying to walk a line of ensuring that the regular MIT degree programs are differentiated, while still leveraging the MIT name to distinguish the online course from just any random online course.
So when can we get degrees from an accredited university via online work? Or even course credit that is accepted by other accredited degree-granting schools (accepted either "at all" or "without jumping through extra hoops").
I don't care if MIT wants to spin off a subsidiary with a distinct name and reputation if they think online students are enough iffier that they'd dilute the main brand. But for getting past modern HR departments you need the real thing to check the "degree X or foreign equivalent" box, and you need to check that box to keep the resume out of the round file.
Yes I know there are a few other universities that do offer such now. But MIT seems to be just dipping its toes in the water rather than jumping in. In the process they seem likely to reduce their "certification"'s usability to the wall decoration and hobbyist satisfaction level.
Some decades ago there were fine, prestigious, correspondence-schooling programs available for people living and working in remote areas who wanted to continue their education. Most of the people who built railroad steam engines, for instance, had degrees from the International Correspondence Schools (ICS - which still exists). The "electronic frontier" has many of the same characteristics - including especially people with remote locations, educational needs, and adequate communication to fulfill them IF suitable institutions exist to service them.
It's good that MIT is trying to fill the need - but it's unfortunate that they appear to be only playing at it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I dunno man, I think you're talking about "IT" work as it pertains to servers, switches, Microsoft certs, running cables, managing backups. You know, sysadmin stuff. Which tech schools can excel at. But the parent is talking about MIT's AI-classes, GIT-hub resume's, open-source projects, statistics, and machine-learning. Developer and software engineering stuff. They're different fields. And the theory side is vital for developers working on serious shit like machine learning. Less so for sysadmins. It's also less vital for developers banging out yet another SQL report. Tech schools would suit a lot of business developers just fine.
As far as apprenticeships go, we have those. They're called interns.
Many universities don't actually compete as much as one would think at first - students have issues of geography and financial issues, among other things. When universities are available online, then they DO compete (with other universities online), and they then have to compete. Hopefully that will push them to improve the education they offer.
This is also very empowering. Now any kid anywhere in the world who understands English can get access to education they could never dream of before. Things like this, and Khan Academy, could help pull the poorest areas of the planet out of the ruts they're stuck in, given enough time and support (and continued and expanded access to them).
If you have clean water, food, shelter, medical care, and a reliable Internet connection, you have civilization.
I have hired (and later fired) people with an online education -- I am seriously skeptical of the quality of understanding obtained from taking online classes.
/.'ers), these skills that will be missed; many of these skills are crucial for self-learning, which is required to successfully understand an online class.
While I agree that expanding the access to education is a great idea, there is no substitute for attending a brick-and-mortar university. Online courses and online lectures are a supplement to learning -- in the same sense that a text book and a lecturer is a supplement to learning. There are certain skills that you will only learn by living on your own; such as learning to balance your social life, classes, managing a schedule, and other activities. However, if you sit in your parent's house (or basement, like most
MIT has discovered distance higher education learning? Welcome to 1969! Over here in the UK we've had high quality university level distance education since then and distance learning offered online since the 1980s. Currently it has over 200,000 distance learning students, many of whom use online environments as part of their learning. Perhaps though the concept of distance learning is not as advanced in the USA as in Europe?
Can any US folks comment? what is the perception of distance and online learning in the US? Over here in the UK, and I believe Europe generally, the idea of doing an online degree is considered a valid method for people to undertake higher education if they cannot get to a university campus (work, family commitments, etc). The Open University is considered to be a high quality degree offering institution and regularly comes high in student satisfaction ratings. This institution offers different media for taking courses, but some of them are offered completely online and have done for some years. I"m suprised that "university offers online teaching' makes news.
Curious - though I suppose it is newsworthy as MIT is such an august educational establishment. Interested to hear a US perspective on how distance and online higher education learning is perceived...
Of course it's theory; CS is literally the science of computation. It's not about engineering.
Granted, getting good engineering out of software devs reveals a gaping education/training hole that needs to be addressed, but that is not Computer Science.
As much as I respect MIT and their - unique for the time - OCW initiative, which is a major pillar of free online education along with the Khan Academy, the current MITx announcement oozes of "mee too":
1. Timing: the seminal three Stanford courses just finished, and more than a dozen for early next year introduced
2. Spring start: could mean anything between March and May; i.e. they were probably caught off-guard by the Stanford initiative
3. No details announced: no list of courses, let alone lecturers' videos; only a lot of disclaimers that make it look half-hearted
Comparing the recent Stanford classes (I did 2 out of 3) with the OCW courses (I did some of those too):
A. It's refreshing that half an hour of a lecture isn't spent on minutiae interesting for on-campus students
B. The certificate is valuable in and of itself, but we do it for the knowledge, and the constant quizzes, homeworks and especially the programming exercises put us on rails and made us continuously engaged, while the OCW courses feel like abandonware in comparison, as if you were eavesdropping (no personalization whatsoever; very erratically available video and course materials; lots of image removals due to copyright)
C. Interestingly the Stanford courses felt amateurish from a technical production standpoint; e.g. low quality yellowish webcam filming Andrew Ng (who was the most prepared lecturer); only left-ear sound in one series of AI vids; limitations (and differences) of the video playback tools; often very imprecise or confusing wording on the AI class; the filming of white note papers, which seemed inferior and idiosyncratic next to the digital blackboard with Khan Academy).
D. The Stanford videos were often very inspirational: while Andrew Ng gave the most thorough and consistent education, Sebastian Thrun was very inspiring especially when showing DARPA challenge videos (what the car "sees") and when demonstrating particle filters.
So kudos for MIT for OCW, though its persisting limits and lack of serious cultivation gave takeover opportunities to incumbents such as the Khan Academy and the Stanford courses. Hopefully they'll try to leapfrog those who leapfrogged them.
> I"m suprised that "university offers online teaching' makes news.
They are scaling up their offering of free materials. Those materials are made available for anyone to use.School such as Open University could at some time use them in their classes and charge a fee for the grading, answering questions, etc.
only and even then cutting out tech schools?? Like some how CS gives you better skills to do a tech job then a tech school does hell lean on job can be even better.
Do you only want a plumbers and electricians that have 4 years in a theory based class room (with some or little real work skills) or do want some who went to a voc / apprenticeship?
The tech feed has big parts that should be done in apprenticeships way.
Job training but HR does not see it that way and you end up with people with beyond-the-industry research who some times are clueless in doing real work.
I say we need more apprenticeships and tech schools. Tech works should have to schools with big sports teams / theory loaded classes to get a JOB or have a good in the eyes of HR "education".
Prestige. It was a migrations fueled by the faculty over the years. They wanted to be like a "traditional" university.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Most Microsoft sysadmins couldn't script their way out of a paper bag.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I hope MIT takes a different route than Stanford did when it comes to the certificates themselves. Stanford's name and faculty are all over the pages for the first two rounds of their free online class initiative. So what do the final certificates look like?
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bx3-ENTZVGxxZTBkZGFjNGYtNmQwMC00NmYyLTgyYWMtZmE4YjZiN2Y0YWU5&hl=en_US
That's . . . dissapointing.
mikejuk asked "Is this just a reaction to the Stanford experiment in running courses?"
There are significant differences -- MIT's courses are geared to self study while Stanford's are tied to the on-campus class and schedule. MIT is also developing an open source delivery platform and certification will be done for a small fee by an independent organization. See: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/12/mits-online-classes-will-be-different.html.
>earn certificates
Problem here is , this is a new major market just like the slightly varied IT courses given.
The universities around my house all got in on these night time IT courses to advance your training, yet did not even recognize these courses for credit....
will these ecourse count for credit seeing as a University is giving them?