Slashdot Mirror
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."
(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?
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.
Taught by Code.org Affiliates who are experienced computer science educators, our free workshops will prepare you to teach the Code Studio courses for grades K-5. Workshop details: The Microsoft Store @ The Domain will host a FREE Code.org workshop. FREE CPEs for educator re-certification will be provided!..Priority: Title I Schools. Waiting List: Non-Title I Schools. THANK YOU GOOGLE & MICROSOFT FOR SPONSORING THIS EVENT!
>> 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.
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
For $200k just hire more teachers.
If you include benefits, overhead, and the amortized cost of the pensions, that would get you two teachers, who on average would be average.
I have taken several MIT Courseware MOOCs, most recently Patrick Winston's AI course. It is better than anything I was taught at the univ I attended. With a MOOC, everyone can see the material presented by the best instructor available. Asking questions in the forum generally gives better and more thorough answers than a rushed professor would give if you interrupted him in class.
If you step back and think about it, mediocre teachers regurgitating the same material over and over is a dumb way to educate people. We can do better.
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.
"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. K-12 virtual schools have taken off in Michigan. They have all online and 'hybrid' programs as well.
As a high performing student I would have watched Kahn Academy until I couldn't keep my eye lids up. The times I did have a question it could have been answered clearly and easily by someone in a video.
You're going to have super star teachers on youtube or other learning channel answering high level questions. (Like how Stack Exchange works). For those people that need hands on learning (which is a small subset of everyone) they will get hands on learning in person.
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.
Teaching as we know it is going to be automated away by technology. Code Academy taught me python syntax in an afternoon. It's clear and straight forward enough that I'm trying to get my wife to learn coding.
I would have spent every waking hour doing Code Academy in one window with Kahn Academy in the other if I had those tools available to me in high school. Instead I got stuck in some math classes with people that didn't care or distracted the teacher from actually teaching. In that scenario I would have benefited from where technology is taking teaching. So will a lot of other students.
Teachers are already experimenting with Fliped classrooms where students watch the lecture as 'homework' and the homework is done in class when the teacher is available. There's no reason the 'interacting with a teacher' part can't be done online. [Some rural schools are rolling out alternatives to 'snow days' where the students still learn at home](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/02/02/382701005/for-some-schools-learning-doesnt-stop-on-snow-days)
There was a story that I can't find now about a teacher that had students write the book for the next semester. Take a classroom of 8th graders and have them make a LaTeX/Wiki page for each chapter they learn about. Make it the final class project and have different groups take a different chapter. The next semester improve on it. After a year or two you'll have a very well written and vetted wikibook on a class.
Why do teacher spend so much of their time on lesson plans? That's something that should have a good central Git repository. If you have a different style of teaching fork the project and make your own. Let teachers merge revisions back. You should have a good set of lesson plans, books, etc all. End the big book cartel and just start publishing LaTeX books for K-12.
I sit at home 400 miles away from my boss. I use my webcam for meetings. I push and pull git repos over VPN. There's no reason learning can't be facilitated in the same way. The best part about it is I can work it into my schedule. Some days I'm up at 4 am coding and feeding the kid. When the kid goes down for a nap, so do I. Then I'll work until midnight with dinner, TV and time with the wife intermixed. Apple has "At Home Advisors" so that people can get tech support from an American working at home. My company has moved almost all IT support to people working from home. Parents don't have to choose between raising a family and working.
With online courses my kids will learn the same way I work. If we want to go on vacation for a month in Germany all we need is internet access and both him and I can get our work/school work done and then eat dinner at a delicatessen, talk Ger
Eh, we're not going to get rid of teachers. They're just going to have more tools and instructional models at their disposal.
This sounds like a good instructional model. After all, one of the best ways to truly learn a topic is to attempt to teach it to someone else.
I'm pretty sure they're going to find out they still need someone in a "teacher" role to monitor progress, resolve conflicts, keep students motivated, adapt the curriculum to individual students' abilities and learning styles, and so on.
When you can replace a teacher with a video lecture you're admitting that you've had substandard teaching all along.