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Hoping To Fix College Teaching, CMU Open-Sources Trove of Software (edsurge.com)
Wednesday CMU announced the open sourcing of its adaptive-learning software platform -- plus analytics and dozens of other related tools for improving college teaching -- as part of a national push "in an unusual move intended to shake up how college teaching is done around the world," writes EdSurge.
Long-time Slashdot reader jyosim shares their report: Officials estimate that developing the software has cost more than $100 million in foundation grants and university dollars. The goal of the software giveaway is to jump-start "learning engineering," the practice of applying findings from learning science to college classrooms. If it takes off, the effort could result in a free, open-source alternative to a growing number of commercial adaptive-learning and learning analytics tools aimed at colleges. One of the biggest concerns by college leaders about buying such tools from commercial vendors is whether colleges will have access to the underlying algorithmic logic -- or whether the systems will be a "black box...."
"We need a scientific revolution in education akin to the one that we had in medicine 150 years ago," said Michael Feldstein, coordinator of the Empirical Educator Project, in a statement. "This isn't a silver bullet, and it isn't charity. It's an invitation to the educators of the world for us all to solve big problems together."
CMU's Nobel prize-winning economics professor Herbert Simon once argued of colleges that "we must step back and view them with Martian eyes, innocent of their history, to appreciate fully how outrageous their operation is... [W]e find no one with a professional knowledge of the laws of learning, or of the techniques of applying them."
Kenneth R. Koedinger, a professor of human computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, now argues that "we need to change higher ed from a solo sport to a collaborative research activity."
Long-time Slashdot reader jyosim shares their report: Officials estimate that developing the software has cost more than $100 million in foundation grants and university dollars. The goal of the software giveaway is to jump-start "learning engineering," the practice of applying findings from learning science to college classrooms. If it takes off, the effort could result in a free, open-source alternative to a growing number of commercial adaptive-learning and learning analytics tools aimed at colleges. One of the biggest concerns by college leaders about buying such tools from commercial vendors is whether colleges will have access to the underlying algorithmic logic -- or whether the systems will be a "black box...."
"We need a scientific revolution in education akin to the one that we had in medicine 150 years ago," said Michael Feldstein, coordinator of the Empirical Educator Project, in a statement. "This isn't a silver bullet, and it isn't charity. It's an invitation to the educators of the world for us all to solve big problems together."
CMU's Nobel prize-winning economics professor Herbert Simon once argued of colleges that "we must step back and view them with Martian eyes, innocent of their history, to appreciate fully how outrageous their operation is... [W]e find no one with a professional knowledge of the laws of learning, or of the techniques of applying them."
Kenneth R. Koedinger, a professor of human computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, now argues that "we need to change higher ed from a solo sport to a collaborative research activity."
Parents and others have been sold a bill of goods that without a college education, a person is less than worthless. So they will pay any price. And spend a hundred K for a bachelors degree.
And since the goal has morphed from a saleable skill to mere posession of a degree, ridiculous majors like philosophy and gender studies graduates ant their parents are expecting the graduate to be firmly emplaced in a 6 figure career right after graduation.
Research has become the raison d'etre for the Universities while the parents are expecting the kids to get that valuable degree.
There are so many layers of middle management being added that one would think that the main purpose of Universities is not education, not research, but middle management.
Finally, having spent several decades at a University, they have really become pretty toxic environments for around half of the population, leading to over-representation of the other half, and unfortunately many of that half are not pursuing degrees that lend themselves to financial solvency or paying back that 100 K loan.
Nw tell me about how open sourcing software is going to fix this?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.