Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project

Gack! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hope it turns out better than his class did. The other classes were far better managed than the AI course.

I'm curious, by Mitchell314 · 2012-01-23 09:35 · Score: 2

how will it be monetized, and I don't mean that in a negative way. (also, bad first link in summary)

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I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie

Re:I'm curious, by Dr+Max · 2012-01-23 09:41 · Score: 2

I would of happily paid $100 for the ai class, and the class had over 100 000 people in it, that's $10 000 000. Also advertising on the site would do well.

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Rocket Surgeon.
Re:I'm curious, by vlm · 2012-01-23 09:43 · Score: 1

how will it be monetized, and I don't mean that in a negative way. (also, bad first link in summary)
I have an idea for an interesting, although evil, business model. No idea if these guys are doing this or not. In fact they probably are not.
None the less... there is a long standing business model of giving away or subsidizing training for copyrighted trademarked patented software.
What if we had education, but only for certain business method patents?
For example, a free crypto class that only taught patented licensed expensive algorithms, and forgot to mention that free algorithms exist?
Admittedly this borders on "training" as opposed to "education" but its still possible.

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:I'm curious, by timeOday · 2012-01-23 09:44 · Score: 1

I wonder too, but it's not like people aren't spending fantastic sums of money for conventional higher education. In other words, he could charge quite a bit of money and still save students quite a bit. Or in the immortal words of Scarface, "this town is like a giant..." (NSFW).
Re:I'm curious, by KhabaLox · 2012-01-23 09:53 · Score: 1

There are plenty of business education companies that charge thousands of dollars to teach you about any number of proprietary software packages for a few days to a week. You can even get Certified(TM).

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Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Re:I'm curious, by mkuki · 2012-01-23 09:59 · Score: 1

I took the class too and would have gladly paid $100 or more
Re:I'm curious, by morgauxo · 2012-01-23 10:03 · Score: 1

Yeah, that sounds exactly like something professor Thrun would want to do.
Re:I'm curious, by strangeattraction · 2012-01-23 10:08 · Score: 1

If the price is on the order of the cost of a book ~$75-$100 I think it is a great deal. The class had it's issues but far few than I imaged.
Re:I'm curious, by kaiidth · 2012-01-23 10:19 · Score: 1

The AI-course was used for recruitment purposes (ie. the top 1k students were invited to apply to Google), which I'm sure made many of the top 1k students very happy.
That said, someone less squeaky-clean than Google might take the approach slightly further, deciding to run a carefully targeted education project, retain data from student use of virtual learning environments and, in the long run, use it to screen out sub-standard potential recruits. However, that would be kind of evil - so I'm sure nobody would ever seriously consider deploying a Trojan course.
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:36 · Score: 1

When courses were $200-$300 each I was taking 1-2 courses a year from local colleges and universities; the problem is in the last 3-5 years the cost has easily doubled (I looked recently and found most in the $500-700 range and you needed to "join" the college which meant other costs and fees (administrative) as well). So, if these courses even offered a "pay us $100" for a certificate mailed to you then I would probably pay, I'm guessing most who got a half decent mark would pay as well. I believe for the AI course that was 7K students, at $100 a pop that's $700,000 for 7K of them... Now, multiply that by 2 courses offered per semester, 3 semesters per year, is 6 * 0.7 Million = 4.2 Million dollars possible per year! I bet he doesn't make that much working for Stanford.
Re:I'm curious, by blackfrancis75 · 2012-01-23 10:41 · Score: 1

I would of happily paid $100 for the ai class, and the class had over 100 000 people in it, that's $10 000 000
I love how you state this as though $100 is the average amount the 100,000 people who took his free course would be willing to pay. You do realise how unlikely that assumption is to be anywhere even near correct, don't you?
Re:I'm curious, by MightyYar · 2012-01-23 10:45 · Score: 1

Of course $100 isn't the perfect amount on the supply/demand curve - the point is that you don't have to support a professor with a room full of maybe 100 people - you now have 100,000 people, and the work isn't that much greater. It's a problem that scales very well.

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Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:47 · Score: 0

Source? I don't remember hearing about the top 1k being invited to apply to Google and I believe I followed the class and subreddit for it pretty well.
Re:I'm curious, by StikyPad · 2012-01-23 10:48 · Score: 1

It's a pretty safe bet that the class wouldn't have 100k people in it if it cost $100. These courses are most useful for people without the means to obtain traditional education, and of course the audience will diminish after initial demand is met.

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Re:I'm curious, by wanzeo · 2012-01-23 10:58 · Score: 1

I took it and wasn't impressed. I found his accent difficult to listen to for long periods of time, and a disliked having a lecture punctuated with short problems. I would prefer an uninterrupted lecture that deals with the theory, and then problems in a recitation section.
Not that it wasn't useful or interesting, but I would not pay $100 for it, and I think most of the people who took it did so because it was free.
Quitting his professorship at Stanford to try to monetize the concept seems like an awful big risk to me. Especially considering the abundance of free learning alternatives like Khanacademy, OCW, or simply youtube.
Re:I'm curious, by Dr+Max · 2012-01-23 11:01 · Score: 1

Fair point, how about if it was $10 per student, $1 000 000 goes a long way to building more interactive videos. Also most of the class would of bought the textbook which was over $100, so if you made a better solution for that students will have more money to play with.

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Rocket Surgeon.
Re:I'm curious, by gknoy · 2012-01-23 11:02 · Score: 1

For someone like me to take a university class of similar caliber, not only would I (normally) have to pay tuition, I'd need to meed prerequisites and so on. I could easily see people paying $10-$50 for a web seminar series.
Hell, do it on a pay-as-you-like basis as a trial, similar to what the Humble Bundle does, and I'd bet that while many people would freeload, others would donate/pay a hundred dollars. I'd think twice at $50, but likely would just spend $20 in a heartbeat if I were taking something like that. Being able to sell textbooks, handy cheat-sheets which collate formulas, or other useful materials would be another way to do it.
Re:I'm curious, by blackfrancis75 · 2012-01-23 11:06 · Score: 2

I don't think you should discount the marginal cost of infrastructure to support that many people streaming online video content, engaging in interactive graded exercises and submitting questions. No, I'm not saying it's anywhere near the cost of supporting that many people in-real-life; which is why we're not comparing it to the marginal gain of one student's university tuition fees.
Say you'd have x people who are willing to pay $y - does x*y cover the ongoing hosting/content development/web development costs? It might do, but the fact that one participant was willing to pay $100 for the course is nigh on irrelevant.
Re:I'm curious, by Bing+Tsher+E · 2012-01-23 11:13 · Score: 2

Quitting his professorship at Stanford to try to monetize the concept seems like an awful big risk to me.
Was he a tenure-track full professor, or just someone hired as a lecturer? I couldn't find any details about that.
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:40 · Score: 1

In 2003 he joined as an associate professor
In 2007 he became a full professor.
That's all according to Wikipedia, so who knows how accurate it is, but if so, he left a tenured spot, which means a whole lot more than if he was an associate that was guessing he wasn't going to get tenured.
Re:I'm curious, by malilo · 2012-01-23 11:46 · Score: 3, Interesting

An Associate Professor IS tenured. It's what your title is just after getting tenure. How they keep you on the hook "being a good boy/girl" is to dangle full professorship in front of you (it comes with more money, not just a nice title). In most cases, if you don't make full professor a few years after associate, you don't ever get it. BTW, ''Assistant Professor' is what you are called pre-tenure.

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"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
Re:I'm curious, by marcosdumay · 2012-01-23 12:27 · Score: 1

The GP was way over the mark here. Would you pay $5? That is a more viable amount.

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Rethinking email
Re:I'm curious, by Ihmhi · 2012-01-23 12:53 · Score: 1

I won't pay anything for a class that won't lead to a degree or college credits.
Employers tend to actually care about the sheepskin in general. You could be the next Kevin Mitnick, but a lot of places will immediately dismiss you because you don't have degrees or certifications of any sort.
While these are great for general learning and expanding your knowledge base, I won't take them seriously until they're accredited in some fashion.

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Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Re:I'm curious, by Dr+Max · 2012-01-23 14:23 · Score: 1

It's true it's not the same as a uni degree, and an employer wont value an online course much; but add in 'introduction to artificial intelligence' and 'machine learning 101' from Stanford online to your resume and it'll defiantly add to your chances. Even if it's not a proper degree (and it will never substitute a real degree) it shows your interested in continued learning, rather then only doing what is necessary to score a job. Also I'm not trying to get jobs with these courses you only make other people rich by working for them. The trick is to start your own business then it doesn't matter what qualifications you have, providing you have a good business plan.

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Rocket Surgeon.
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 14:29 · Score: 0

good point about the next kevin mitnick, Big business do really only care about uni degrees. Thus companies like apple wouldn't even realize if the reincarnation of Steve jobs came up and bit them on the ass, cause he never finished a degree and dosn't even really have a defined skills set. Not that I'm a steve jobs fan the man has set back personal computing for the power user by 20 years
Re:I'm curious, by RandCraw · 2012-01-23 15:29 · Score: 1

> An Associate Professor IS tenured.
Not quite. All tenured professors are associate or full. But you can be promoted to associate _before_ you get tenure. (I've seen it a couple of times.) That said, I suspect the title "Associate Prof" assures that tenure will be forthcoming shortly if not already.
And BTW, I'm pretty sure that Thrun was not tenured. At Stanford, he was a research professor and a Google employee at least half-time.
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 17:43 · Score: 0

I won't pay anything for a class that won't lead to a degree or college credits.
Luckily, not everyone is like you.
Re:I'm curious, by elashish14 · 2012-01-23 17:43 · Score: 2

At Stanford, he was a research professor and a Google employee at least half-time.
That would probably make him an Adjunct Professor, ie. one who is not always given a course to teach and usually has an outside job, or a day job if you will.
In any case, here is a more comprehensive list of possible professorships - actually quite an interesting read.

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Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-23 19:37 · Score: 1

Socrates taught for free, part of the reason he's remembered today.
Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-23 20:33 · Score: 1

Toward the end of the ai-class an email was sent around to those who had scores in the top 1%, offering to submit their names for consideration to mulitple Silicone Valley companies. So, biz was using the ai class as a recruiting tool.
Re:I'm curious, by bgeezus · 2012-01-23 22:39 · Score: 1

Pssh.... Socrates is remembered today because he, like Ozzy Osborne, was repeatedly accused of corruption of the young.
Re:I'm curious, by Ihmhi · 2012-01-23 23:11 · Score: 1

I should rephrase. "I won't pay the kind of money I'd pay for a college course". I actually do enjoy giving money to content creators when I can afford to. (I honestly have so much stuff - a couple hundred games on Steam, for instance - that I haven't been buying much lately.)

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Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Re:I'm curious, by Loveless62 · 2012-01-24 01:57 · Score: 1

It's possible they could make money on textbook sales. I'm sure the textbook for the A.I. class made a lot of sales, although Norvig promised to donate the money made from the textbook to charity (I guess that's the academic thing to do). But since the new classes will not be associated with a university, there shouldn't be any qualms with using textbook sales to fund the company.
Re:I'm curious, by vlm · 2012-01-24 03:08 · Score: 2

There are plenty of business education companies that charge thousands of dollars to teach you about any number of proprietary software packages for a few days to a week. You can even get Certified(TM).
I was thinking more along the lines of "buy more than $25 million of our new DEXCS / firewall / router and receive a week of free training for everyone in your engineering department". For some reason the city name Romeoville IL which was for all intents and purposes "suburban Chicago" rings a bell.
In "the good ole days" this was pretty standard. I sat in many a "free" class from Tellabs, Fortinet, DSC, a couple others. Fortinet had a bar in their training room and after class they'd serve you a drink and release the hounds err I mean salespeople. The DSC people came on site which kind of sucked because you didn't get to travel and coworkers would pull you out of class, after all, "you're at work, not away at training". Tellabs had this strange restaurant nearby which mostly served antelope, or was it buffalo, but it wasn't fine dining it was just regular sit down family dining, and I'd never seen an antelope themed restaurant before.
They had no interest what so ever in teaching you basic OSI model or the SDH or TCP window mechanisms, but they would spend all week teaching you the crazy details of their proprietary software.
Sometimes I wonder if the proprietary vendors whining about piracy would make more money if they gave away their software and went full on training and certifying mode. I'm fairly certain the total dollar value of CAD education nationwide exceeds the revenue of CAD vendors nationwide....

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:I'm curious, by tehcyder · 2012-01-24 03:20 · Score: 1

The trick is to start your own business then it doesn't matter what qualifications you have, providing you have a good business plan.
Start a business young and you can kiss your youth goodbye. Working for yourself is pointless unless you have some sort of deep inteest in money for its own sake and a love of working 16 hour days.

Bar the odd Mark Zuckenberg, you'll end up working hard for thirty years and retiring a broken, embittered man with no interesting memories and the charisma of a pocket calculator.

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:I'm curious, by tehcyder · 2012-01-24 03:23 · Score: 1

Toward the end of the ai-class an email was sent around to those who had scores in the top 1%, offering to submit their names for consideration to mulitple Silicone Valley companies. So, biz was using the ai class as a recruiting tool.
Well, I can submit my name for consideration to multiple Silicon Valley companies any time I want, it really doesn't prove a great deal. Did you lucky 1% end up paying any additional handling fees or anything?

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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 04:24 · Score: 1

Best way to "corrupt the youth" today is to teach them by example, for free.
Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 04:29 · Score: 1

Haha, I didn't get the email. But some in freenode #ai-class said they did. There was a reddit post with a screenshot too I think.
Re:I'm curious, by bgeezus · 2012-01-24 05:11 · Score: 1

Sigh...hasn't anyone watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-24 09:36 · Score: 0

Archimedes charged for teaching and now everyone has forgotten him? Ridiculous point. People deserve to make a fair wage for a great product.
Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 13:57 · Score: 1

People deserve to be free to decide for themselves. If Thrun and Khan want to teach for free, maybe they're tapping into the same motivations as Socrates, Mahavir, Buddha, Christ, Diogenes, Mendel, van Gogh...
Re:I'm curious, by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 14:18 · Score: 1

Hm can't figure out how to paste an url from this smartphone. There's a reddit thread, search for "job letter redditaiclass".
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-24 16:38 · Score: 0

Also most of the class would of bought the textbook
Would HAVE. I told you once already, you fucking moron.
Re:I'm curious, by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-24 16:43 · Score: 0

but add in 'introduction to artificial intelligence' and 'machine learning 101' from Stanford online to your resume and it'll *defiantly* add to your chances
No it won't. No way, never!
Re:I'm curious, by Dr+Max · 2012-01-24 17:55 · Score: 1

Maybe you could explain why (like i tried explaining to you about continued learning vs stagnation), instead of just dismissing it. Oh wait your an anonymous coward that's not even going to read this.

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Rocket Surgeon.
Re:I'm curious, by Dr+Max · 2012-01-24 18:05 · Score: 1

woah sorry dude. i didn't relize you took it so strongly (that or just have NO life). By the way english isn't my first language, and this would be a lot easier if it didn't have so many stupid rules.

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Rocket Surgeon.

"Professor Resigns" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:35 · Score: 1

This headline is like writing "Man shot in Ford's Theatre"

Ads Blocked by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:37 · Score: 0

Funny - I thought I had ads blocked on here. What's so unique about online education?

Re:Khan by AchilleTalon · 2012-01-23 09:38 · Score: 4, Informative

Of course he did, he teamed with Khan and relied on him for some parts of the AI course teaching prerequisite maths and probabilistic theory.

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Achille Talon
Hop!

good work by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:38 · Score: 0

good on you sebastian, That ai class was amazing.

Business model? by vlm · 2012-01-23 09:39 · Score: 1

What is their business model? I checked out their page, they've got a couple employees, they're offering stock options to new hires... I'm seeing this as one of those /. jokes:
1. teach a free class at a profitable school
2. quit and teach a free class at a startup
3. ???
4. Profit!!!!!

Is the plan to operate on donations, or ... ?

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Re:Business model? by elrous0 · 2012-01-23 09:50 · Score: 1

Sheer selflessness will give them all the profits they need.

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SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Re:Business model? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:52 · Score: 0

Easy enough. I think if they charge a negligible amount of money for actually getting a grade and no money at all just to watch the lectures and try your hand at the homework, then they'll make crazy bank. Even at 5 bucks a head at 50k students for one class, the profit is substanial.
Most of your bandwidth costs can be mitigated by paying cdn. Your site doesn't have to refresh that much so programming is minimal from here on out. The most time and cost consuming practice itself is writing and filming the lectures. Then you can re-use ad nauseam.
As class experiences went I found the class to be relatively mediocre, but it wasn't like I paid stanford or even state school prices for it. If you were already reading a book on the topic on the side, which I was wanting to do anyway, then this is a bonus. Now you can supply proof that your reading experience was fruitful. It's quite a bargain as a matter of fact.
Re:Business model? by Cruciform · 2012-01-23 10:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

If they do as mentioned above and use the class as a way to drum up interest from companies that want to recruit the best students then it can pay for itself via finders fees. That would be a great way to subsidize education.
Re:Business model? by hweimer · 2012-01-23 12:36 · Score: 1

I think one possibility will be that degree-granting schools let their students take some courses on Udacity, while the site recieves a financial compensation for doing so. This could work especially well for highly specialized courses which the school cannot offer in-house. Ultimately, the goal might be to offer degrees themselves, but that would require significant resources for supervising exams all over the world in order to prevent cheating.

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OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Re:Business model? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-01-24 02:04 · Score: 1

That's going to be tricky, though, because he's going to be up against MITx, an open-source platform designed inside a university to allow exactly that to happen. With the option to set up your own internal servers and to trade your classes and class components with other universities, I think MITx has the upper hand in this one....

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Re:Business model? by vlm · 2012-01-24 03:25 · Score: 1

Ultimately, the goal might be to offer degrees themselves, but that would require significant resources for supervising exams all over the world in order to prevent cheating.
Having taken quite a few accredited online courses and also some certification tests (CCNA, CCNP, stuff like that) they simply push the cost onto the student.
Either drive to a free campus testing center an hour or so away (the proctor was a receptionist) or pay a cert mill testing center $200 for the privilege of using their computer to log into a website for an hour or two while their receptionist watches you.
The student of the future may stop whining about paying $100 for a textbook and start whining about paying $100 for a midterm and final exam proctor.
Several of my online classes were project or essay based and no testing was done...

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Office Hours by sycodon · 2012-01-23 09:40 · Score: 1

I wonder when he will hold office hours?

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.

Re:Office Hours by morgauxo · 2012-01-23 10:02 · Score: 1

He did for the AI class

That was unexpected by Animats · 2012-01-23 09:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

That was unexpected. But then, his automatic driving work had already moved to Google.

He turned around the Stanford CS department, which was embarrassingly bad for years. (I have a degree from there; I know.) It was being run by the mathematical logic people, who were trying to make AI work through predicate calculus and expert systems. That turned out to be a dead end, but the existing faculty didn't want to admit it. Thrun reoriented the department towards statistical methods for AI, and things got moving again.

Re:That was unexpected by flabbergast · 2012-01-23 10:09 · Score: 3, Informative

Wasn't this every CS department though in the 80's and the 90's? AI in that time was all about expert systems and predicate calculus.
Re:That was unexpected by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:15 · Score: 0

The AI research lab may have been lacking, but that doesn't make the whole CS department "embarrassingly bad". Besides, you got a BS in '85, which in computer science education terms, is like complaining that the Cambridge physics department sucks because that Isaac Newton fellow is way off base in many ways..
Re:That was unexpected by Animats · 2012-01-23 12:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

Actually, I got a MS from Stanford. The problem was the expert system guys, Feigenbaum and company. They were claiming that expert systems would yield strong AI Real Soon Now. Feigenbaum's 1983 book "The Fifth Generation" shows that optimism at its height. It did not end well. The next decade is referred to as the "AI Winter".
Re:That was unexpected by llmc · 2012-01-23 13:06 · Score: 1

What? Thrun didn't even go to Stanford until 2003. Not to knock Thrun, but to suggest that the department hadn't already gone down that path is an insult to quite a few equally amazing professors in the department who had been doing statistical methods before this arrival.
Re:That was unexpected by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 15:53 · Score: 1

The problem with statistical AI, for me, is that I want to correct it when it makes a mistake; but the Stanford Lexparser, for example, has no way to let me do that, while the program's running. I think being able to communicate with a running program, teach it at runtime (as you would a kid), ask it why it answered the way it did and tell it why it was wrong, is essential to AI. The statistical AI approach does not address the importance of feedback in the form of "expert system" type rules and other heuristics.
A hybrid. multi-agent approach that includes many different techniques is likely to prove best. That's my working hypothesis :)

This is the future. by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-01-23 09:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

When lectures can be saved to a video format on the Internet, why pay the teacher to deliver the same lecture every year?

When books can be copied for free, why pay 200$ for a physical version of the book?

I think the only thing we'll have in terms of live people will be live tutors you can ask questions via advanced IM

The cool thing about this is that it is the opposite of the "No child gets ahead act", if a kid is motivated, they can watch hundreds of supplemental optional videos related to their course. Or with proper understanding of the subject at hand, they can move ahead to the new videos. Also this is all available for free or nearly free, so the cost of an education is simply 100$ or less for a laptop. This means people across the world who couldn't have access to quality education will. If you're in a 3rd world country with nothing to do all day, maybe you'll devote your life to getting a grand education. We might find new Einsteins popping up and at younger and younger ages.

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God spoke to me

Re:This is the future. by blueg3 · 2012-01-23 09:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

When lectures can be saved to a video format on the Internet, why pay the teacher to deliver the same lecture every year?
If a video of a lecture is as useful as the live lecture, it's a bad lecture.

When books can be copied for free, why pay 200$ for a physical version of the book?
If all of the distributed copies are free, I'm thinking the major problem is going to be finding people to write and edit them. Don't get me wrong, there are some older math texts you could probably use for ages, but that will only get you so far.
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

When lectures can be saved to a video format on the Internet, why pay the teacher to deliver the same lecture every year?
If a video of a lecture is as useful as the live lecture, it's a bad lecture.
If seeing the lecture online is only as good as seeing it live, then it is a bad web site. Online, you can put additional content, have links that go to the exact point in the video where a question is answered, break up the video into topics so that students can spend more time on topics that are most relevant to them. You can also have more interactive tools and such.
Re:This is the future. by tibit · 2012-01-23 10:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

If a video of a lecture is as useful as the live lecture, it's a bad lecture.
I'd be careful with that statement. If you claim there must be some interaction, then let's get real: you don't want to be interrupted by questions every 15 seconds. So live questioning as a feedback from students to the lecturer is out. Then the most interaction you'll get is the lecturer looking at faces and body language of students.
But what does that tell the lecturer? Nothing that's very applicable when the medium is video!! In a video lecture, if you feel like falling asleep, you pause it, get up, walk around, come back refreshed, start watching again a few minutes back into the recording to get back on topic. If you need to look something up, you can pause, google for it, look in a book, look in previous lectures, then resume when you're ready. Those two situations cover most of the realtime feedback a lecturer would use, I'd presume. So, failing to show particular examples of how the reverse channel helps in a prerecorded lecture, I call your claim an gross exaggeration at best. Audience feedback is important in a live lecture setting, recorded lectures are really quite different because the student controls the playback. Good luck pausing the professor when you feel like dozing off for 45 minutes in the auditorium :)

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A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:This is the future. by jholyhead · 2012-01-23 10:19 · Score: 2

I actually think that the way the lecture videos were presented in the AI Class were superior to most conventional lectures. They were broken up in bitesize chunks of 2-10 minutes each, which meant that as soon as you started to lose focus, you just walk away, whether that be after 15 minutes or 2 hours. Also, if you found a topic confusing you could stop moving forward, read up on the topic yourself or consult your fellow students on the discussion boards (which were incredible) until you were happy with it, then continue on. And of course, you can watch them repeatedly.

Sure, there are shortcomings, but I think they more than held their own.
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:24 · Score: 0

When books can be copied for free, why pay 200$ for a physical version of the book?
I own every hardware iteration of the Nook (that's five, if you are counting), plus other devices on which the Nook app runs. I have a huge library, both electronic and physical. I read constantly. I even have some trade books in electronic form - but I also own the physical book for those. As much as I love ebooks, I need a physical textbook to get the most of out it.
Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy. But to me, modern ebook navigation isn't up to the task of helping me mine textbooks. So much easier to just turn, and see this huge illustrated book next to me than to have to click "go to page" "387" to reference a second work.
Now... give me a desk like this, and a couple cheap 'huge ipad-like devices' and improve flipping back and forth between two disparate pages and I think I can make something work.
The real question is whether we need a new edition every single year for every single subject in order for it to be financially viable. It's my understanding that for many publishing houses these things are a tax write off anyway.
Re:This is the future. by AchilleTalon · 2012-01-23 10:34 · Score: 1

The point is: Do we really need that many teachers around the world? Wouldn't be much more productive to have them working on their respective fields and do either research or at least development and innovation. Turning theory into practical things and stimulates the economy rather than teaching? What's the best usage of all these brains? Have a few of them teaching, writing books and the rest of them leading projects or having all of them teaching?

--
Achille Talon
Hop!
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:40 · Score: 0

If you're in a 3rd world country with nothing to do all day...
Yeah, instead of hanging out at the beach eating bananas and drinking coconuts, maybe those Africans can get a free education, courtesy of the White Man.
On a more sombre note:

... if a kid is motivated, they can watch hundreds of supplemental optional videos related to their course.
Sal Khan (of the Khan Academy) already noted (in one of his videos; might have been the TED video) that teachers wanted Khan to specifically give them control of the lessons so that children could not get a head start of their official teaching schedules. Since these kids need a phone number and parental approval to sign up, it would be difficult for them to advance. BTW, No-Child-Left-Behind is also based on the fact that the classroom teaching is based on the average learning pace of the typical student, which means gifted and slow students get "left behind".
Re:This is the future. by Cruciform · 2012-01-23 10:42 · Score: 2

A lecturer can also do what a comic does and spend a considerable amount of time fine-tuning their presentation on live audiences before recording the final event for the class. Once you've got a solid feel for what works you can bang it out.
And if you need to you can edit together footage from a couple of different events to get the Director's Cut.
Re:This is the future. by StikyPad · 2012-01-23 10:54 · Score: 1

If you're referring to interaction (which is really the only thing lacking from a properly produced video), well lectures, by definition, are not Q&A sessions. It's only a poor lecture that requires questions form the audience, usually because the lecturer glossed over a point or made a mistake. Video allows these weaknesses to be corrected in editing, and with feedback they can get *better* over time rather than requiring a perfect delivery every time.

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https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Re:This is the future. by dvice_null · 2012-01-23 10:59 · Score: 1

> If a video of a lecture is as useful as the live lecture, it's a bad lecture.
With video you can do things you can't do live. E.g. a lecture about history could contain actors with costumes and look like a movie. You can show maps with animations, cut out the dull scenes and perfect it.
The only advantage of a live lecture is that you can ask questions, but how often can that really be used if there are 200 people? You could actually, with computers, allow people to ask questions in the middle of the video. There could be a person answering them at first. But you could then improve the video more, so that there would no longer be any need for questions.
Consider testing. It used to be done by humans. Now it is all about automated testing. People are instead of testing, writing automated test cases. What if instead of teaching, teacher would automate teaching and then improve, maintain and upgrade it. E.g. learn from cartoons, learn from games. Make learning fun. There is still much that could be improved.
Re:This is the future. by Dahamma · 2012-01-23 11:12 · Score: 1

Which works for "good" lecturers as well as it does for "good" comics. The difference is the great lecturers (like the great comics) can adapt on the fly based on the audience, in a way making each individual performance/lecture better (for that particular audience) than the impersonal "average"...
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:14 · Score: 1

There are times when teaching university courses, particularly graduate ones, but sometimes undergraduate ones as well, can be immensely rewarding and actually spur research in different directions. Often, this is due to the fact that the instructor is exposed to a large gamut of students with different perspectives on how to go about solving a problem and inclinations for going ahead with it. Sometimes, however, it just takes someone to ask a question in such a way that pushes the mind closer toward a solution.

To elaborate from my own experience, a few years back I happened to be enrolled in a series of 'required' classes touching on facets of optimization theory and mathematical programming. In addition to presenting the course content, the lecturer would also, often spontaneously, wonder aloud about the feasibility of certain augmentations to existing methods, the development of meta optimization methods, and so forth. Though most of the students didn't seem to actively jump on these musings, a handful of us did, and we were able to turn them into fruitful inter- and after-class discussions and later refined them into credible ideas that eventually were published in SIAM journals.
Re:This is the future. by turkeyfish · 2012-01-23 11:19 · Score: 1

Clearly, there has to be a balance. Things are rapidly changing and people have to keep abreast of research. However, the best researchers, although perhaps poor lecturers need to communicate new ideas. There is much need for more education everywhere in all disciplines, since this will lead to more work and more productivity hence an expanding economy and jobs. Given the threat global warming poses there simply isn't much time left to get people thinking about the consequences of technology on our lives.
Re:This is the future. by Dahamma · 2012-01-23 11:21 · Score: 1

I think this is in many ways the fundamental *problem* with modern education, not the solution.
I don't even think you need an analogy to a different field. Just look at public elementary and secondary education and what happens when you try to cut costs with large class sizes. What you lose is any individualized education and personal interaction with the educator, which ends up boring some students while leaving others behind. Additionally, not everyone learns most effectively in the same way.
Continuing to make education more and more impersonal like a factory assembly line will predictably result in more and more stock, minimally functional products, rather than unique and creative individuals.
Re:This is the future. by roman_mir · 2012-01-23 12:18 · Score: 1

Try this, you may learn something.

--
You can't handle the truth.
Re:This is the future. by real-modo · 2012-01-23 12:48 · Score: 2

The point is: Do we really need that many teachers around the world? Wouldn't be much more productive to have them working on their respective fields and do either research or at least development and innovation.

The saying goes, "the best way to learn something is to teach it."
There's a famous anecdote by Richard Feynman about himself. He was working on some knotty area of quantum physics with colleagues. After some time, the group felt it had a good understanding of the topic and could move on. Feynman said, "OK, just let me write it up as a freshman lecture to test our understanding." A week later he went back and said, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't write that lecture. We need to study this some more."
So, no to the second question. If we want good solid research done, we need our researchers to be teachers.
At grade school level, what's needed is individual tuition by tutors smart enough to adapt their methods to each student. Expert systems hold out the promise of that, but we're a couple of decades away at least. Meanwhile, the world needs more teachers. Yes to the first question.
Re:This is the future. by Cruciform · 2012-01-23 13:04 · Score: 1

But the whole goal of this is to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers.
So that means he either has to refine his lectures or start construction on a new venue.
Which makes more sense?
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 15:00 · Score: 0

The only truly good lectures I've ever been to had almost constant interaction between the students and professor. Not in the form of students asking questions, but in the form of the professor asking questions requiring some form of student answer before continuing. It's especially good if the students end up struggling while trying to sort out the details live, and the instructor can create useful tangents that fit around a students trouble. That's how you learn; not by watching, but by engaging.
So a lecturer who could be replaced by a video of himself is in my book a bad lecturer. And as a child of the 80s, the spawn of the internet, and now a teacher myself, I know the good teachers from the bad. And it's clear that computers will never replace real teachers. Not ever.
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 15:16 · Score: 0

New Einsteins with no degrees and no means of getting their work published in established journals.
Pointless.
What these online education institutions really point out is the fact that people are paying for the piece of paper. Without it, all the education in the world won't get you a job.
Re:This is the future. by Dahamma · 2012-01-23 16:26 · Score: 1

I suppose if it's an entry level AI survey class, it's a good way to present basic information to a large audience.
But I just can't imagine there is that sort of audience (that is interested or even capable) for the 300+ level graduate AI and robotics classes that Thrun (or other similar professors) would be qualified to teach as well. It sure doesn't seem like the best way to train a new batch of teachers and AI researchers, at least.
I just think the whole "I resigned because I can't go back to a 200 person lecture anymore" is a bit melodramatic... hopefully Thrun and others continue to be involved in the small-scale lectures, labs, etc. that are still best being taught close up and in person...
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 16:32 · Score: 0

The point is: Do we really need that many teachers around the world?
Where are you going to get letters of recordation from if you have never met your professors?
Re:This is the future. by __aancvu2993 · 2012-01-23 22:33 · Score: 1

> Online, you can put additional content, have links that go to the exact point in the video where a question is answered, break up the video into topics so that students can spend more time on topics that are most relevant to them. You can also have more interactive tools and such.
How interesting is this, good sir. Or, you could use this new thing that everyone likes better because it's superior. It's called writing. Good writing is even better.
Re:This is the future. by elsurexiste · 2012-01-24 00:28 · Score: 1

I don't know. I agree more with GP.
The best video lectures I've seen are the ones from Sandel, and they actually were recordings from his lectures. I also enjoyed those MIT videos that were live recordings. The way AI Class was structured around sound bites made the whole chapter disconnected at times.
But maybe this is comparing apples to oranges, so I considered Khan Academy instead. His videos are usually longer and I don't get as distracted or feel the pace is slow. Everything looks more integrated.
But maybe it's just a matter of taste...

--
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Re:This is the future. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-24 02:44 · Score: 0

I think I have to agree with the original sentiment on this point.
I would agree with the video being as useful as a live lecture if the lecture is strictly a case of sticking to a script. However, the best and most memorable lectures I attended at school were more of a discussion between the professor and the students. Of course such discussion lectures require that the students be interested enough to read ahead, research some additional material, and be ready to ask questions and challenge the points the professor is making, but I always took more away from classes structured that way than the more "traditional" lecture structure.

If a video of a lecture is as useful as the live lecture, it's a bad lecture.
I'd be careful with that statement. If you claim there must be some interaction, then let's get real: you don't want to be interrupted by questions every 15 seconds. So live questioning as a feedback from students to the lecturer is out. Then the most interaction you'll get is the lecturer looking at faces and body language of students.
But what does that tell the lecturer? Nothing that's very applicable when the medium is video!! In a video lecture, if you feel like falling asleep, you pause it, get up, walk around, come back refreshed, start watching again a few minutes back into the recording to get back on topic. If you need to look something up, you can pause, google for it, look in a book, look in previous lectures, then resume when you're ready. Those two situations cover most of the realtime feedback a lecturer would use, I'd presume. So, failing to show particular examples of how the reverse channel helps in a prerecorded lecture, I call your claim an gross exaggeration at best. Audience feedback is important in a live lecture setting, recorded lectures are really quite different because the student controls the playback. Good luck pausing the professor when you feel like dozing off for 45 minutes in the auditorium :)
Re:This is the future. by tehcyder · 2012-01-24 03:49 · Score: 1

GP no doubt lives in the fantasyland beloved of slashdot readers, whereby we have achieved full AI and unlimited energy (*handwaves*) so that everyone can basically live for free, spending their time studying and enjoying themselves before somehow magically creating a start up company that makes them billionaires even though they have nothing to sell and no one needs to buy anything.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:This is the future. by tibit · 2012-01-24 04:44 · Score: 1

To me, a lecture is something that you do in an auditorium with a couple hundred students -- think of general undergraduate courses. I don't think there's much use for asking students questions in such a setting: at best it will give you feedback from a couple % of students. You can't have a discussion with 200 people, not without a moderator within the audience, and even then: what would be the point? You're learning very little about majority of the students, my experience is that you'll get a couple who are comfortable speaking out in public, and they may not necessarily the ones who bring the most to the discussion.
Of course if you're teaching a graduate course with 15 people enrolled, it can be very interactive, but that's not what I'd consider a general lecture.

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:This is the future. by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 04:49 · Score: 1

The ai-class videos included quizzes that you had to answer before continuing, so that type of interaction was present, and worked well for me. If I didn't agree with the answer I could check reddit or aiqus or ask in #ai-class.
Re:This is the future. by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 04:52 · Score: 1

Let your work recommend itself.
Re:This is the future. by blue+trane · 2012-01-24 04:56 · Score: 1

The opportunity for this type of interaction exists in online forums where others are taking the class too.
Re:This is the future. by Cruciform · 2012-01-24 12:28 · Score: 1

Yeah, it is nice to have that access. It's also really handy to be able to run through a lecture series in advance or after the fact and process concepts that didn't sink in. For someone considering AI or Robotics courses being able to sit through a lecture series, and prepare for the coming workload could be a real boost to grades and understanding.

Course Website by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:44 · Score: 0

I hope the class search-engine projects turn out better than the Udacity.com website did.

Wheres the car-code? by cellurl · 2012-01-23 09:44 · Score: 0

Does anyone know where the Google-Car code resides?

Mr Thrun was with the GoogleCar...
I am too lazy to look, so it seems like an opportunistic time to seek "the code".

cellurl...

Going back to the original universities. by trout007 · 2012-01-23 09:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

In the first universities anyone could stop in and listen to a lecturer for free. If they were interested in perusing individual education they would work out a fee between the professor and the student. There wasn't any strict curriculum or degrees. The professors paid the university a cut similar to the way a barber shop works today.

The business model should be the same. Free to watch the lectures and pay for individual attention.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.

Re:Going back to the original universities. by nessus42 · 2012-01-23 10:14 · Score: 1

In the first universities anyone could stop in and listen to a lecturer for free.
I've worked at a few top-tier universities, and they've always allowed people to sit in for free on nearly any class they might want to. It's not an official policy, but I've yet to see a professor turn down anyone who asks. Or in a large class, they'd never notice that you're there anyway.
|>ouglas
Re:Going back to the original universities. by trout007 · 2012-01-23 10:24 · Score: 1

I know students have audited courses but I didn't know they would allow non-students.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:Going back to the original universities. by jholyhead · 2012-01-23 10:34 · Score: 0

Just because people get away with it doesn't mean they're supposed to do it.
Re:Going back to the original universities. by Talennor · 2012-01-23 10:34 · Score: 1

But they haven't started allowing you to sit in from the internet, which is just so much more awesome.

--

//TODO: signature
Re:Going back to the original universities. by nessus42 · 2012-01-23 10:45 · Score: 1

I know students have audited courses but I didn't know they would allow non-students.
Most professors I've met seem perfectly happy to actually have someone in the class who really wants to be there. They'd probably change their minds about this if there started to be crowds of people doing this, or if the people doing this asked a lot of stupid questions, though.
|>ouglas
Re:Going back to the original universities. by nessus42 · 2012-01-23 10:50 · Score: 2

Just because people get away with it doesn't mean they're supposed to do it.
Who cares about "supposed to"? I'm talking the actual reality of the matter.
It's true though that if too many people started doing this, they might stop allowing it. I doubt that this is much of a risk, however. You'd have to live near the campus and have enough free time during the day to do this, so there are not going to be teaming masses.
|>ouglas
Re:Going back to the original universities. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 15:19 · Score: 0

That's because Apple has a patent for it.

The U.S.A. Job Seekers +4, PatRIOTic by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 09:47 · Score: 0

are in dire need of writing their own search engines and programming robotic cars.

To quote the phrase: Don't quit your day (or night ) job.

Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout, C.I.O.

Re:The U.S.A. Job Seekers +4, PatRIOTic by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-01-24 02:56 · Score: 1

This would be what is called a "learning task". It allows the exploration of lots of what we call "concepts" while giving the student a "sense of purpose".

--
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:I said it elsewhere... by mark-t · 2012-01-23 09:53 · Score: 0

D'oh! Posted in the wrong story! Mod down. Offtopic.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

I'm with you, buddy by elrous0 · 2012-01-23 09:54 · Score: 1

Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting

I had the exact same feeling of elation when my Chicks with Dicks site really took off. How could I go back to being just another carny running a ring toss game after that?

--
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.

Re:I'm with you, buddy by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:08 · Score: 0

Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting

I had the exact same feeling of elation when my Chicks with Dicks site really took off. How could I go back to being just another carny running a ring toss game after that?

[citation needed] AND pics or it never happened.
Seriously though - the true power of education is in the one-one-one, where the teacher can actually gain insights, not just the student. Great teachers never stop learning. He's going to stagnate as a teacher.

Kudos to him! by mkuki · 2012-01-23 09:57 · Score: 1

I was one of those who took the online "Intro to AI" class Advanced Track. While I didn't do as well as I'd hoped (screwed the pooch on the final and ended up with a 78% total score), I do have to say it was a really great class and that he and Prof Peter Norvig deserve a ton of credit for this. It was both engaging, well presented and mind-stretching. I did find myself consulting the Khan lectures on Probability and Linear Algebra quite a bit.

Re:Kudos to him! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 10:33 · Score: 1

I too took the "Intro to AI" class Advanced Track. I was greatly disappointed at the lack of actual teaching. We were lucky to get a 10 minute explanation on completely new topics. I wish they provided more instruction and less emphasis on the quizzes and tests. I wish him lots of luck with Udacity.
Re:Kudos to him! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 15:49 · Score: 0

I feel like I've heard a lot of interesting stuff but didn't learn to put any of it to use. Like listening to stories and then doing multiple choice tests on them. Advanced track, got 92%, but what have I learned? There were no practical exercises. I could have just as well read Norvig's book.

The reason for the delays in the other courses? by rst123 · 2012-01-23 09:57 · Score: 1

Is this related to the delays in the start date of the other free stanford clases? (http://www.class-central.com/ for example)

Re:The reason for the delays in the other courses? by jholyhead · 2012-01-23 10:06 · Score: 1

No. Thrun never had anything to do with the Stanford Engineering courses. They just started at the same time to maximise publicity.
Re:The reason for the delays in the other courses? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 16:01 · Score: 0

No, Thrun's Udacity (formerly KnowLabs) and Coursera (new brand name for the other classes) are competitors. These were two separate endeavours from the beginning.
And class-central is just a link list set up by a user because Coursera still lacks a real homepage. Class-central is not affiliated with any of the classes or companies.
Coursera said the courses are delayed because of administrative shit that is "beyond their control". Probably to do with university lawyers, intellectual property etc.

This is a big deal by jholyhead · 2012-01-23 09:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

Thrun is (I think) the first tenured Professor at a major University to stand down in order to try to bring learning online. Unlike the offerings from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley etc etc, Udacity wont be under the same "Don't damage the university's business model" constraint, so they are truly free to go for broke.

There has been a lot of criticism of the AI course - most of it by people who didn't attend beyond the first couple of weeks. I finished the course and had a good time doing it. It wasn't without flaws, but I have no doubt that with the necessary financial backing, they can make the necessary improvements and push on to create some remarkable content.

If they can solve the question of certification, they, and those who will inevitably follow, might just revolutionise the educational landscape.

And if it all goes wrong, Google wont kick him out of bed.

Re:This is a big deal by gknoy · 2012-01-23 11:04 · Score: 1

Even without certification, it's still awesome.
Re:This is a big deal by AlgUSF · 2012-01-23 13:19 · Score: 1

I attended the first six weeks, I feel horrible that I didn't finish. But life gets in the way; wife, kids, house, work. I am glad I earned a high quality education while I was young and had nothing better to do.

--

I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Re:This is a big deal by thereitis · 2012-01-24 06:17 · Score: 1

Yes, I feel the same. I watched as much as I could of the course but unfortunately didn't have time to get right into it as I would have as a young student (who lived at home). If it were more applicable to what I do at work, maybe I could have justified doing some of it during the day.

President of Yale went to Edison Project 1997 by peter303 · 2012-01-23 10:19 · Score: 1

The Edison Project was private for-profit K12 schools combining modern business management and high technology. Possibly a good idea, but got little traction. The wiki site said it was had to get the "education establishment" to buy in and build many of these.

Around where I am now there is a flourishing charter school ecology. Some are to escape the low-expectation public schools. Others have religious slant. And still others advocate challenging education like Chinese language immersion or computers. Even the high end schools worry some parents whether these are too fringe for their kids to get into a top college.

Re:Khan by Forbman · 2012-01-23 10:25 · Score: 3, Funny

"Khan, you bloodsucker! You're going to have to do your own dirty work now! Do you hear me? Do you?"

It's a good start by Colin+Smith · 2012-01-23 10:50 · Score: 2

Start with the basics (beat Google) and build up over time to something really difficult.

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Deleted

Re:Khan by engun · 2012-01-23 10:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

I find it interesting though, that Sebastian Thrun gets so much attention, and Andrew Ng for example, gets no mention. I think that Ng poured in a tremendous amount of effort to teach an absolutely outstanding class with far more structured and well-developed content.

Don't get me wrong, Thrun is an enthusiastic and obviously knowledgeable individual, but having followed both AI and ML classes, I was of the opinion that Andrew Ng was the better teacher. Thrun needs to improve his teaching skills, so that he can impart his great store of knowledge better to students. Although that is my personal opinion, I think you might find that it is backed by some evidence, if you were to trawl through the comments on the respective forums of the AI and ML classes. Overall, both of them + Peter Norvig and the rest of their teams, made fantastic contributions, and that should be recognized equally, whenever possible!

Web site? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:03 · Score: 0

I have no doubt that these guys are brilliant and are providing us with remarkable educational opportunities ( thanks), but I would not want to learn web development from them based on my experience of their web page. I keep Noscript turned on at all times unless there is something specific I need to do or see. With Javascript turned off the only links on the home page that work are in the footer.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. I expect more (and better) from -- well -- everyone, but to not see it here ( on a CS educational web site), it kind of bums me out.

Re:Khan by Paradigma11 · 2012-01-23 11:20 · Score: 1

/absolutely agree.

The Open University by Colin+Smith · 2012-01-23 11:20 · Score: 1

The Open University have been doing this stuff literally for decades. I fondly remember as a child watching lectures from teachers with excruciatingly bad 1970s hair styles and clothes.

http://www.open.ac.uk/

Note the fees are the standard (substantial) UK university fees, so it isn't free by any means.

--
Deleted

Whats the problem? by turkeyfish · 2012-01-23 11:22 · Score: 1

What's the problem with their "Enroll" Button? This isn't exactly a good start for a course called CS101.

Re:Whats the problem? by binary+paladin · 2012-01-23 11:45 · Score: 1

Same problem here. I just tried to sign up and nothing on the site appears to actually work properly.
Re:Whats the problem? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 12:51 · Score: 0

I guess I'm going to have to pass on a website that teaches programming but can't even get their enrollment form to work properly.

Re:Khan by John+Courtland · 2012-01-23 11:46 · Score: 1

I felt the other way. I really enjoyed Sebastian's almost-whimsical adventure through the field of AI. I really think Ng is a good professor but I often found myself having trouble paying full attention for the entirety of the course.

--
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.

Probability killed me too by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 11:48 · Score: 0

I took the advanced class too, got 73% (not very good) BUT, I didn't have a lot of time as I took the ML and DB course (got 100% and 95%), work full time, and have a wife and three kids. My problem, like yourself by the sounds of it, was Probability and I just didn't have the time to study/learn it so it really brought me down. Over the Christmas break I went looking for a course/book on Probability but didn't have much success. I got one general Linear Algebra book that has a chapter on Bayes Theorem and found an online lecture series (from Harvard) about probability as well but it was so boring I couldn't get through it :(

Hopefully I will get back into that Harvard one and/or get another (newer) online course on Probability soon. Any suggestions for a good self-paced book or course for Probability would be greatly appreciated :)

(BTW, I did University 20+ years ago and calculus is a faint memory (surprisingly, of the Rum smells wafting from my Profs office) and I don't remember ever doing a course on probabilities but did do a Statistics and Linear Algebra course)

OK for teaching by PPH · 2012-01-23 11:54 · Score: 1

But what about research grants?

What makes some professors interesting is the part of their time they spend 'pushing the envelope' doing research. The online stuff can (if used properly) allow them to reach more students with less demand on their time. So, more research. I'm fine with that.

What made Sebastian's class interesting was some insight into his (award winning) work on the DARPA challenges and other robotic car stuff.

--
Have gnu, will travel.

free Stanford online courses delayed by tommeke100 · 2012-01-23 12:05 · Score: 1

I registered for a couple of free online Stanford classes that were supposed to start yesterday (Machine learning, NLP, game theory). All were delayed for an indefinite time (couple of days to couple of weeks, no exact number was given). Might this be the reason?

This is NOT the future. by real-modo · 2012-01-23 12:59 · Score: 2

The modern lecture format originated in medieval Northern Italy, and hasn't changed significantly. The rationale for the lecture as a method of transmitting knowledge and skill was that books were extremely costly, due to the cost of scribes.

Since Gutenberg the rationale for lectures has disappeared.

Rather than moronically scaling up lectures in a TV-like way, we need some R&D done on better methods of teaching. This has finally been realised and academics are - with great trepidation - starting to measure themselves and experiment with different methods. I expect that this century will see the death of the lecture.

Re:This is NOT the future. by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-01-23 14:49 · Score: 1

I know teaching will change drastically. I have my own theories. I'm thinking of a computer program like the one in "Time Machine" where AI teaches us. But we don't need AI to teach us. We can simply have interactive computer aps. This is different than the failed edutainment movement of the 90s. You have aps which teach a certain subject and all sorts of books/lectures on the same subject. What I think would make this software great is that when you first come to it, you don't enter your age for it to determine your level. We all know people who are older can have gaps in their knowledge, so it quizzes you, then places you in the correct place for you to learn. The ap would constantly be gauging your aptitude on the current subject by repeatedly giving you work to complete and test. Once the ap figures you mastered a subject, you get introduced to the next subject that is built on top of it.

TR:DL- I think we'll have an interactive AP that would take the place of a teacher once someone sits down and codes it.

--
God spoke to me

Re:Khan by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 13:04 · Score: 0

I took Thrun's computer vision course at Stanford. The man is probably a visionary researcher, but he's not a very good teacher, in my opinion.

Are professors teachers really needed anymore? by BlueCoder · 2012-01-23 13:11 · Score: 1

You only need to record a lecture one to three times with possible editing. Maybe update it now and then. It's the equivalent of a electronic textbook. Only thing left is answering questions and office hours per session. If he does this it just seems to me he will just be the director of a tutoring group. Are professors/teachers really needed anymore?

Re:Khan by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 13:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

Oh yes. I took all three classes (AI, DB and ML), and AI was plagued with ambiguity, handwaving and mistakes caused by sloppiness. Some homework questions had so many errors that they were unsolvable and had to be amended several times shortly before the deadline, of course without telling the students who had already submitted their answers. Check out the old discussions on aiqus.com, it was horrible. The AI class was also the one with no practical exercises at all, except for a tacked-on codebreaking exercise after the final exam that was neither graded nor properly discussed afterwards. The AI class server software did not include video streaming (they relied on Youtube instead) nor the promised forum. In contrast, both Andrew Ng's Machine Learning class and Jennifer Widom's Database class were hands on and thoroughly prepared. I learned a lot more there. I think the problem with Thrun and Norvig was their attitude, probably not unrelated to being employed by both Stanford and Google. They expected to be venerated as superstars. They seemed to think they could pull this off without much effort.

Needs a better name by buzz_mccool · 2012-01-23 14:03 · Score: 1

The name "Udacity" seems a bit too cute if part of the goal is to have someone want to put successful completion of this education from this institution on their resume/CV and have it be taken seriously.

No-dacity by wrencherd · 2012-01-23 14:12 · Score: 1

Udacity seems to have been over-whelmed as of the time of this post: 9:11p EST (maybe apropos?).

Offering a CS degree soon? Eng degrees too? by RandCraw · 2012-01-23 15:59 · Score: 2

I doubt Thrun intends to offer a few courses and stop there. I think he'll offer an entire CS curriculum within maybe 3 years, and offer some soft of CS degree program soon thereafter.

It seems like you could offer other degrees using this same technology -- probably all engineerings, physics, probably math and statistics, maybe biology (but without labs).

Not only would the degrees be FREE (a huge thing for the poor in the third world and BRIC countries), but they'd be FAST. By excluding all the non-essentials, the equivalent of a BS in CS could be completed three times faster, in no more than 1.5 years.

Based on what I've seen from Thrun so far, I bet the degree will be widely respected, and frankly, better than 3/4 of today's CS degrees.

Universities beware. You're about to run smack into The Innovator''s Dilemma. And in my humble opinion, it's about damned time.

Re:Khan by blue+trane · 2012-01-23 19:29 · Score: 1

Govt held the Darpa Autonomous Car Challenge that motivated Thrun.

Re:Khan by Sprite_tm · 2012-01-23 22:04 · Score: 1

I think Andrew Ng had an easier job: machine learning is a course with a curriculum that's better defined than the almost all-encompassing AI class. That's why I had the idea the AI course sometimes jumped from subject to subject, while the ML class was more building up to something. I agree the ML class was easier to follow, I don't think it's because of the teacher, though: swap Andrew and Sebastian/Peter and I think you'd gotten the same result. Aside from that, I immensely enjoyed both courses (enough to enroll in one of Udacities courses as soon as it was announced), so they both did an excellent job.

Re:Offering a CS degree soon? Eng degrees too? by dkf · 2012-01-23 22:58 · Score: 1

I doubt Thrun intends to offer a few courses and stop there. I think he'll offer an entire CS curriculum within maybe 3 years, and offer some soft of CS degree program soon thereafter.

That's a heck of a lot of work to create. I know from experience that a half-semester part-time course requires a massive amount of work to create (though not so much to maintain afterwards, to be fair) and you need a lot of those to build a proper curriculum since at degree level you can't just teach everyone the same thing.

Not only would the degrees be FREE (a huge thing for the poor in the third world and BRIC countries), but they'd be FAST. By excluding all the non-essentials, the equivalent of a BS in CS could be completed three times faster, in no more than 1.5 years.

All that effort to make it has got to be paid for somehow. Yes, it doesn't have to be by the students, but it's too much work for it to be reasonable to expect it to just spontaneously happen.

That said, I wonder at the timescales you mention. A nearly 5 year undergraduate degree? WTF? That's absurd. I did mine in 3. I suppose you could have shortened it further by getting rid of vacation time (but that'll likely give most students a mental breakdown of one kind or another; you need breaks from learning) and ditching all those annoying exercises and projects. Which would make the degree totally worthless as it would leave someone only able to vomit up what they'd been told instead of being able to apply it (or their brains).

Nah. A BS in 18 months is an idea put forward by someone without a fucking clue about education or people or the subject. You know, a classic Dilbertian pointy-haired manager.

--
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"

Re:Khan by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-23 23:20 · Score: 0

This is why I left academia. Nothing is ever good enough. Thrun delivered an amazing course but 'there's always room for improvement'.

But what about exam shops...? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-01-24 00:57 · Score: 1

They may hit a snag on the more practical side of things when they find that their full paid course is in competition with other examining bodies.

Certainly the model wouldn't extend to my field -- language teaching (and I mean human languages). The language teaching industry is split into two main segments -- the teaching industry, and the exam mill. There are a few big national institutions that handle a few exams offered universally. In UK English, you need to have the Cambridge certificate to be taken seriously. In Spanish, it's the Instituto Cervantes. So you can't teach for free and make people pay for the certificate, because they want someone else's certificate anyway.

In order to keep the customers paying, Udacity need to keep the courses very unique and individual, which isn't going to appeal as much to employers unless they are in that exact specialism. For more general skills (eg a particular programming language), you want to know that they have general competence beyond the confines of the specific course, so it's actually of benefit to have the teaching and assessment from independent bodies. (Maybe a second wind for the likes of Brainbench.)

In essence, the problem is that these courses are modeled on university-style modules, but don't lead to a degree. Employers like degrees, and always will. But they'll want any additional certificates to be business-relevant, not academic in nature.

--
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:Khan by tehcyder · 2012-01-24 03:12 · Score: 1

Wow there are some fussy fuckers on slashdot.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it

Re:Offering a CS degree soon? Eng degrees too? by Half-pint+HAL · 2012-01-24 03:17 · Score: 1

Not only would the degrees be FREE

No they won't -- just like Coursera and MITx, Thrun's business model involves free training and paid-for certification. The classes are free, but the qualification isn't.

By excluding all the non-essentials, the equivalent of a BS in CS could be completed three times faster, in no more than 1.5 years.

Based on what I've seen from Thrun so far, I bet the degree will be widely respected, and frankly, better than 3/4 of today's CS degrees.

There's still the issue of accreditation, and one of the stipulations of an accredited degree programme is the amount of study time. If this methodology really is much more time-efficient than traditional universities, then what we would expect to get out of it (and I would hope we would want this, too) is a higher quality education, not a shorter one.

European universities are already making learning much more flexible -- the European Credit Transfer System makes it much easier to switch universities or to spend a year abroad. At several universities in Scotland, you can leave your degree programme at the end of any year and have a qualification to show for it. 1st year: Certificate of Higher Education, 2nd year: Diploma of Higher Education, 3rd year: Bachelor's degree (ordinary), 4th year: Bachelor's degree (with honours).

If you could teach the equivalent of an honours degree in 2 years, it would still only be a diploma, not a degree. But then you could transfer to a slower university and take lots of interesting modules to expand your breadth of knowledge and get a high pass at the end of it....

--
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'

Re:Khan by thereitis · 2012-01-24 04:23 · Score: 1

I found both the AI and ML classes had pronunciation errors and/or sloppiness that took away from the course. In a real live setting, you could ask the teacher to repeat what they said. Online, you can only rewind the video and hope that another listen helps (it often doesn't). Closed captioning would really help in this respect. Not all of the quiz problems were well defined, either. In the AI class they didn't take away from your grade, but getting answers wrong due to either an ill-defined problem or not being taught the material yet is psychologically draining. Anyway - main point is there is room for improvement and I'm sure they will.

Re:Offering a CS degree soon? Eng degrees too? by AnonyMouseCowWard · 2012-01-24 05:54 · Score: 1

I took Thrun's AI class, and passed. It was fun, I learned some things, but it was _not_ an university class, by which I mean that while the material was clearly university-level material, it was skimmed over like we would do in high school. I understand it's impractical to test an implementation of AI algorithms for 100,000 students, but well, that's one of the differences between "real class" and "online class".

I don't know if a biology degree without labs, or an engineering degree without labs, would be worth anything. Sure, you would learn basic theory, understand the principle... but you know, that's not enough. It's like saying you understand high-level physics without doing the math around it, it's just not the same level of mastery.

My personal opinion, is that he could replace some technical training schools and teach you CS/IT basics, but I really don't like when people think that learning physics or math is useless in CS/Engineering. These are things that shape your mind and give you a thought-process that is hard to acquire otherwise. And the social skills that universities teach you, through face-to-face group projects and labs? Invaluable, and unlikely to be acquired online.

Nothing to do in a 3rd World Country? by Dareth · 2012-01-24 06:23 · Score: 1

"If you're in a 3rd world country with nothing to do all day"

Maybe they are interested in eating at least one meal each day. That may require more work than opening a refrigerator or going down to the corner market.

--

I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling

Not much workload.... by mjperson · 2012-01-24 06:54 · Score: 1

If your professor goes from teaching 100 people to 100,000 people without much increase in workload, then either your professor sucked when teaching 100, or you are missing the point of attending his class entirely.

It's not just a matter of reading the notes and listening to the lecture. The professor needs to respond to problems the students are having, adjust pacing based upon performance, and be able to handle individual questions from students. That's why good professors hate classes that large (100). It's a lot of work.

Re:Not much workload.... by MightyYar · 2012-01-24 07:06 · Score: 1

I think other threads cover the topic of quality of instruction better, and we don't need to re-hash that here. I was just commenting on the economics of the effort. Once you've made videos and created message boards and figured out automatic online testing and scoring, the amount of effort moving from 100 to 100,000 people is not 1000x - it does not scale linearly. Mostly your costs will be additional bandwidth and hosting charges.
Granted, at some point even this won't scale... for instance maybe the discussion boards will get too big to be effective - but there is probably a solution to that as well, and in any event you are well past the point where you need each student to pay $50,000/year.

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

Re:Khan by Temporal+Anomaly · 2012-01-24 09:58 · Score: 1

I think blaming their attitude is going a bit too far, but the course definitely lacked a lot of what made the other two so great.

I started taking all three but dropped AI after a couple of weeks. I could have gotten over the software problems but the quality of the content made it difficult to keep going. The worst thing for me was the quiz questions. Rather than having one or two review questions per 20min video, the AI class seemed to have tedious homework style questions every two minutes. It was more of an annoying interruption than a useful addition.

Still, it's great that this exists, and I hope his experience with AI-class leads to improved content in these new classes.

There's also going to be more online classes offered by Stanford/Berkley starting soon, e.g. http://crypto-class.org./

Full profile of Thrun by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-25 08:53 · Score: 0

The Airspace did a very comprehensive profile on Thrun and his experience with the AI class http://theairspace.net/events/robotic-mastermind/

It's amazing how emotional and significant this is. Very disruptive.

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Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project

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