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New Google and CMU Moonshot: the 'Teacherless Classroom'
theodp writes: At the behest of Google, Carnegie Mellon University will largely replace formal lectures in a popular introductory Data Structures and Algorithms course this fall with videos and a social networking tool to accommodate more students. The idea behind the multi-year research project sponsored by Google — CMU will receive $200,000 in the project's first year — is to find a way to leverage existing faculty to meet a growing demand for computer science courses, while also expanding the opportunities for underrepresented minorities, high school students and community college students, explained Jacobo Carrasquel, associate teaching professor of CS. "As we teach a wider diversity of students, with different backgrounds, we can no longer teach to 'the middle,'" Carrasquel said. "When you do that, you're not aiming at the 20 percent of the top students or the 20 percent at the bottom." The move to a "teacherless classroom" for CS students at CMU [tuition $48K] comes on the heels of another Google CS Capacity Award-inspired move at Stanford [tuition $45K], where Pair Programming was adopted in a popular introductory CS class to "reduce the increasingly demanding workload for section leaders due to high enrollment and also help students to develop important collaboration skills."
For $200k just hire more teachers.
(Assuming the average student takes 8 courses a year.) So this is to get the CMU name on your diploma and certification you passed the exam?
I find it a little concerning we're letting corporations and private foundations control how universities/schools are doing their stuff.
At the very least, it's self serving. Especially from people who keep offshoring jobs and abusing the H1B system to lower wages.
This sounds like we're letting corporations define what education should look like to maximize their own pool of people they can pay even less to.
Want your kid to have a good job? Get them into welding or being an electrician or something.
Because you can't fucking outsource that shit.
Having private companies driving this message is going to prove to be a terrible idea in the long run, mark my words. Google doesn't give a fuck about your education, they care about their own profits.
There is no other area of education where we're letting corporations and foundations tell us what to be doing.
Google translation: Find a way to lay off more faculty and make existing faculty work a lot harder for the same pay.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I took an EE circuits class back in 1983 where the professor, as far as we knew, existed only on some VHS tapes in the corner of the room. The teaching assistants, none of whom spoke English as far as a casual observer could determine, took turns popping the tapes in. I ended up having to go to my physics TA to figure out what was going on. I remember feeling ripped off and pretty much disgusted.
damn! Duped again!
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>> tuition $48K (a year)
My first kid will be entering college in about 4 years and I plan on giving each of my kids about $20K (total) to help with their undergraduate education. (Each also went through 9 years of private school before high school at about $3K per kid per year, so I'll be about $45K into each kid's education total.) I'm already harping on the importance of getting through college without picking up debt. That means they will (hopefully) be shopping for ugrad creds from cheap alternatives (e.g., community colleges), and then transferring into a university only when they absolutely have to to get their 300/400-level credits. They'll also need to work through college and/or pick up some scholarships and/or live a home a bit to escape with little or no debt (and hopefully be completely out of college and the house in four years). I'm also looking at some trade options for one of my sons (good grades and great personality but dislikes reading and scores only the 70-80th percentile on standardized tests).
With a lot of other gen-X "middle class" parents like me (single IT earner, wife works part time) doing the same thing, I see the market for on-premise college and university undergraduate degrees starting to dry up. After watching the collective fail of an overeducated millennial generation so far, we just want our kids to get out there and succeed. Whether or not they have the same diploma on the wall that dad, grandma or the neighbors do...not so much.
As a reminder, there is no evidence from significant studies published in peer-reviewed journals that proves that teacherless instruction is as effective, or more effective, than having a teacher in the classroom. Data we do have says that it is less effective.
All of these virtual classrooms, teacherless classrooms, and cooperative social instruction neglect the fact that students learn best when interacting with another person who is an expert.
When you read stories like this, try to look past all the technology and see if there is any evidence to suggest these methods of teaching have been proven to be effective, workable, and if people retain information they've learned. Again, all existing evidence shows they are wholly ineffective.
It's just an experimental class.
Its is a peculiar computer science conceit - that people, with their biases and foibles, can be replaced by sufficiently sophisticated computing resources.
The conceit shows up everywhere - from users with 'system says no' responses, to Google's algorithmic approach to everything, to OLPC talking of heli-dropping laptops into remote villages, to apps for everything: no matter how unimportant.
Unfortunately, instead of augmenting humans tech tries to supplant them
...middle of the class, they're actually teaching 3 classes, not one.
Pair programming? Great. Another step toward the institutionalization of parasitism.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Something has to change here. Tuition continues to rise much faster than inflation, yet students are supposed to be satisfied with videos and a "social networking tool". I'm sorry, but that's fine if I'm paying not very much, but for the price of a CMU education, I want a real live professor (not a TA) with actual experience and enough depth to answer most any question the undergrads can dream up.
This is so true. I used to be very pro college, but now that my own kids are reaching the point of going or not, I've changed my tune. When they were little, I expected them to go to college. It was such a clear win. Now, I teach them how to evaluate whether they should go to college. It's not a clear win anymore.
News reports like this are reminiscent of 1999-2001. There was a CS boom back then too, as well as a host of pop-up "IT bootcamps" and intensive developer/web design classes. This was to support the initial build-out of the Web and some of the advances in systems work that this drove. Now, it looks like Google is trying to juice CS enrollment further and keep the boom running longer.
One problem with this is that we in the IT and dev fields through the first boom have experienced what happens when people motivated solely by money or the desire to be in on the next big thing get pushed through education. Colleges are seeing it now in other fields too -- Petroleum Engineering majors were getting six figure starting salaries before the bottom fell out of the oil market recently. The hard reality is that supply and demand will even out any temporary spikes fast. In this case, Google, Facebook and a bunch of others are bumping up supply by egging people on to study CS and advocating H1-B cap increases. It's obvious they just want to produce gobs of cheap code monkeys to do basic web'app programming, not the world-changing computer science that makes a lot of these things possible.
I agree that you can't just "do what you love and the money will follow" anymore, and that's a shame. But the worst thing would be to go into a field solely for money, figure out you hate it or aren't good at it, and spend 10+ years BSing your way through. I clearly remember MCSE bootcamp graduates who couldn't do basic tasks, and worse, didn't want to figure it out.
Let me guess, the university will charge less for the class to reflect their savings on professor salaries, building maintenance, and increased enrollment made possible by removing the physical constraints of a classroom. You and I both know that won't happen.
... hire enough faculty to teach the students.
Agreed. I graduated in 1997, and I think back then it was still possible to find work that made any degree from any reasonable school worth it. Liberal arts students have always had problems, but at least there were some teaching jobs available and companies were willing to take a chance on someone who wasn't a perfect fit. For example, I got a chemistry degree and used my part time tech support job to land my first "real" IT job. These days, you really have to think about it. Graduating in a field where you can find work is almost always a guaranteed win over not going, or worse not finishing. But, going to a private school and running up massive debts you can't pay back to get a degree that isn't marketable is an even worse decision than it once was, given the vast sums of money involved.
Just like the tech boom we're seeing now, I think the "everyone needs to be in college" boom will calm down somewhat. Tuition can't go up forever, and if people aren't getting an ROI they won't pay for it anymore. Being a state school grad, I've always wondered whether the Ivy League connections network you buy for your $50K+ per year is actually worth it. I know that's where all the investment bankers, big law firm partners and management consultants come from, but are you guaranteed success with a Harvard, Yale or whatever diploma? I don't think that's the case.
An even more extreme example is law school. The Bar Association basically gutted entry level law jobs, allowed offshoring, etc. all while opening new law schools and encouraging people to practice. Now, the only way to make any serious money as a lawyer is to work for a big law firm, and those firms only hire the top 10% of the class from the top 14 law schools in the country. So not only do you need to go to the best schools -- you need to be better than all your peers. Otherwise, you waste $250K+ and three years of your life...literally flushing it down the toilet, no recovery possible, etc. That's the worst ROI in education ever.
Believe it or not, trades are a good idea. They're not outsourceable, and if you live in a state with reasonably strong unions, commercial construction will provide a very stable living. Plus, apprentices get paid while learning. There's going to be a ton of steamfitters, carpenters, welders, etc. retiring, so anyone who isn't cut out for higher education should get in on it. You'll get a stable living...no six figure salaries without massive overtime, but no feast or famine either.
yet another ill-conceived attempt to teach without paying teachers to be tried; final collapse of education system looms?
Social media? Is that like, asking for answers or help on Facebook, with a CMU logo?
And for the folks who think hiring teachers costs too much... try looking at all the articles about the war on tenure, and how most course (that is, > 65%) are taught by "adjuncts", with no chance of tenure, and lucky if they don't need food stamps, they earn so little.
I need to make sure my stepson does *not* consider CMU for starting college next year.
mark
Many teachers are already being replaced by computers. But as far as what target the teaching should be designed for I have an unpopular opinion. Teach to the brightest students! The gifted students will be the ones that offer society the most and educational efforts should support the star students far more than lesser students. Even in public grade schools we need to teach to a level that is challenging enough to cause some very bright students, from good homes, to fail. Lesser students should be trained to cook or lay brick or build roads. Right now many of our best minds are being held back while teachers struggle to get kids who could care less about learning up to speed which almost never works.
Google has a notorious hiring bias for graduates of brand name schools. Do they think this will work because there will be more CMU graduates, regardless of quality?
"Applied CS" is a built-in talent that most don't have: many of these students won't succeed and never could, no matter who tries to "educate" them. One role of CS teachers is to spot the ones who can't do the work and redirect them. From CMU or Stanford's point of view, letting an untalented student struggle on for a few extra years at no cost beyond lights and air conditioning is a good financial move, given that they won't actually graduate and hurt the school's reputation. What does Google get out of it, though?
If we can replace professors with tech, why not students as well? We could have classrooms with billions of virtual students taking lessons from billions of virtual professors without any human being involved at all. Think of the progress education could make.
So basically they are just giving them a text book in video form? People are going to pay tuition for this? Does this actually count as a degree in this modern world? I mean the whole value of the education was the ability to ask questions when you didn't understand things, and the interactive coursework. If you don't have that, it's just a self study certification at that point. The sad thing is I am going to have to work with the products of this 'education' system here in the near future. It's already bad enough....
I remember seeing an online MIT Masters in CS a few years ago that cost $60,000 (flat rate.) While I'm sure people learned something, it struck me as a flat out sale of a piece of paper with the MIT logo. Most online degrees nowadays advertise that they don't distinguish whether the degree was on online or not.
The sad thing is that, for the career minded, that $60,000 was probably a good investment, just like a $250,000 (or whatever it is now) Harvard MBA could pay for itself easily by opening jobs in Manhattan, despite not containing any significant content beyond State U's program.
I'd mod you up, if I still had points.
Median college debt is only about $30k which is not bad.
I'm thinking a miniaturized tennis-ball launcher, adapted variously:
I think I can get funding for this soon.
Are you sure that they need to go to college? College isn't for everyone. The trades need intelligent people too. You can get paid for your apprenticeship/internship and work all day with your hands. The 21st century trades are the 20th century college degrees. Stuff gets easier & simpler to use/understand until it just requires someone smart/clever with training and not someone with a full degree. IT and Plumbing have a lot in common. You don't need to know fluid dynamics to know how to do plumbing.
You're already starting to see a shift in the medical community. Your average physicians assistant and nurse can do more than a medical doctor from 100 years ago. With the cost of health care rising they're going to start shifting work down to people with less skills. My wife has 4 years of residency, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of college and I would still trust a 'apprentice' trained nurse to put in an IV. My wife hasn't done the procedure in years. It's a waste of her medical knowledge and resources to have her put in IVs. In 20 years (if not sooner) there's going to be a robot that can scan you arm (they have that already), see where to poke and do it all before you know what happened.
IMHO IT is going to become a trade in the next 20 years. Like other trades they need to unionize and stop letting companies treat them how they are. After it's a trade then it's unskilled labor then automated.
After watching the collective fail of an overeducated millennial generation so far, we just want our kids to get out there and succeed. Whether or not they have the same diploma on the wall that dad, grandma or the neighbors do...not so much.
Unfortunately that same diploma is becoming increasingly essential for any employment all the way down to gas station attendant. If I had kids I would highly encourage them to find a trade and go to a trade school. Find a job that pays just well enough to do the things you actually want to do while giving you enough free time to do them.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Not sure what state you're in, but $20k should be plenty to attend a quality 4-year state university with the default high-GPA/high-SAT score scholarships without even bothering with the community college cost-saving step. Although public education funding has been getting a lot worse in the past few years, so my numbers may be out of date.
No, the MEAN debt is about $29K. The MEDIAN is less than $9K. Note the discrepancy: a small number of students are taking absolutely huge debt loads that drag the mean way, way out of line.
Also, that's only among those *who actually have debt*, which is under 40% of students. When you read those numbers in the NYT or however's howling about student debt today, remember that they exclude anyone who has incurred no debt.
The number of households that have an unbearably large student debt load is actually pretty small.
"Teaching" as we know it is going to be replaced. We will always have teachers and people that foster learning but it will not be done as it is done now.
Yep, teachers are just going to keep incorporating new technologies... like blackboards and whiteboards and textbooks and transparencies and TVs and computers and projectors and the internet and laboratory equipment. But kids that can learn on their own will continue to learn on their own, and teachers will be there to try to keep those students engaged and motivated and get the best that they can out of the rest.
Why does a tiny small school in the middle of nowhere need both a French AND Spanish teacher when you could have someone in Spain and France teaching them through Youtube and interacting through Skype. Look at how Duolingo[0] has taken off. That's something that can be introduced to a 3 year old and they will intuitively pick up without fighting 13 years of trying to 'unlearn' some things in English.
I'll check out duolingo, but usually it's relatively difficult for a native speaker to teach their "milk" language to a mature student learning it as a second language. My wife is a native Russian speaker, but she only professionally teaches her other languages (German, Spanish, ESoL) since her knowledge of those is more academic than guttural. Later on when you're ready to try to pick out the nuances of native speakers, then you're much better off doing a full immersion program abroad if you really want to work on fine-tuning your accent and tone and colloquialisms. It's actually pretty silly that many foreign language education programs really insist on hiring native speakers for beginner - intermediate language education.
I can understand trying to find ways to teach more people than you have staff to teach, it's a difficult situation. But we always get the same round of comment arguments when this comes up, so I will list the prototypical comments.
"The advent of new multimedia technologies will make the classroom teacher obsolete. There is no need to worry about finding a rare and expensive licensed teacher in a subject when you can bring in lectures from the top teachers on the subject. This will be such a beneficial use of Edison Wax Cylinder recording technology that by 1900 the profession of regular classroom teacher won't even be on the books."
"Technology is a distraction from the learning that should be going on in the classroom. Why, in my day we learned everything we needed to know to build the modern world without any of this newfangled tech. When you put these new "Chalk Slates" in kids hands, all they use it for is to write messages back and forth and draw rude pictures and cats. Let's get back to learning the way the people who built the steam engine did!"