
The rise of online “certificates” and how they threaten traditional degrees - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/education/2013/09/edx_mit_and_online_certificates_how_non_degree_certificates_are_disrupting.single.html
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VLM
TLDR is probably a lot more than Second Life impacted the meatspace real
estate market, but probably less than Amazon impacted the bookstore market.
Sorry if I gave it away for anyone, as if this couldn't have been guessed.

One thing not discussed, or I somehow missed it, is the topic of using
resources from "online classes" to help traditional classes as a multimedia
resource. As an example, there's a good Youtube video series of a Cornell
prof's Verilog FPGA course. If you're a bit confused about, say, writing a
cellular automata in Verlog or at least the general concepts of doing
something like that on a FPGA, well, spin up lecture 3 or 4 or so in the
series.

In the long run, a state U could probably just show this prof's videos as the
lecture, and hire a TA or two to answer questions for the people who won't pay
attention to the video. Those pro videos are actually edited to exclude
mistakes, editorial comments, and small talk, which is in some ways
unfortunate.

There are a couple classes worth of Gilbert Strang mathematics lectures. I
don't really see any point in an amateur trying to lecture on uni level math
if you can just watch Strang's videos.

If you want to spend money, "The Teaching Company" has innumerable excellent
production quality video lecture series on vaguely academic topics. My public
library has them for loan for free.

Another excellent example, the "History of Iran" podcast audio lecture series.
Audio recordings of Prof Richard Bulliet teaching a class at Columbia around
2008ish. If you have 100+ hours to burn an amateur's "History of Rome" podcast
is pretty good too. There's more out there than just "tech".

I suspect the primary long term effect is the end of the professorial lecture.
You'll simply watch videos and at most talk to a TA. I attended a thousand
person Calc lecture a long time ago, never saw the prof closer than 100 feet
or talked to him personally. My discussion section TA was alright. There would
have been no loss replacing the prof with a video cassette of Strang (This was
over two decades ago...)

~~~
_delirium
Re: the prediction, it's possible, but these predictions have been coming out
since the '60s at least, and renewed every decade. With the advent of
videorecorded lectures, one vision of the future was that there would be no
more need for every school to have professors giving local physics lectures,
for example, and instead everyone would just watch videos of someone like
Feynman.

That didn't quite happen, though, even though video lectures have been
available for a long time. People do use them for self-study (even the 1964
Feynman lectures, which were only audio-recorded, are popular for that
purpose), but typically for personal enrichment type purposes: study outside
one's own specialty, weekend study post-college, etc. (I personally don't use
them at all, because I use an even older technology for self-study: the
textbook.)

If MOOCs succeed to a larger extent than video-lectures did, I think it will
have to be by providing something other than just recorded lectures, which has
been tried many times already.

~~~
VLM
True, but, the interesting new ability is being able to externalize the costs.

Don't like my linear algebra lecture, go watch Strang. For free.

In the "olden days" we used to pay profs, in some cases cash collection, in
exchange for hundreds of pages of photocopied text.

Now you can distribute a video, with someone else paying bandwidth both up and
down for the cost of putting a URL on the class website or in a class email,
which is kind of impressive.

There is an amusing meta "loop" that I was watching the FPGA video lecture
series at home last week and during a video distributed so motivated students
can self-teach, the prof was very unhappily complaining about students being
too lazy to look up a simple .pdf datasheet for a temperature sensor so he was
providing the information now as part of his notes or something along those
lines.

So it would be possible that the same students too lazy to google for a simple
device datasheet would never be motivated enough to watch a video lecture.

There are other alternatives. Profs used to be graded on how well they used
high tech multimedia, I could see a prof editing a MOOC-type or EDx-type video
down to fill 80% of their class time and then spending most of the class time
showing a video and then 15% or so answering questions or expanding upon
topics or whatever.

I think the parasitic book industry would be very unhappy were they replaced
by free web videos, so we can pretty much expect a very expensive video
service to appear. Parasites gotta be parasites.

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ghaff
I suspect that we're seeing the future of MOOCs here. There will continue to
be free low-touch courses which, in many cases, will essentially function as
ads for the university. But the real focus will be on online and blended
certificate programs that, while inexpensive compared to traditional degrees,
will certainly not be free.

None of this is a bad thing but I imagine it will be at least somewhat
disappointing to those who value MOOCs as free/very low cost educational
options or who saw MOOCs as something more disruptive to higher education than
they are likely to ultimately be. (It's probably also worth noting that the
institutional beneficiaries of this blended model are going to largely be
those schools which already have a strong brand and which don't feel
threatened by online programs.)

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auctiontheory
What MOOCs (will increasingly) highlight is the limited incremental
educational value provided by most traditional educational institutions. The
value is in the signals: (1) proving you can stick with something long enough
to get a degree, and (2) proving you were good enough to get into a selective
institution.

I have two degrees from famous universities. I remember very little from my
classes, but even at the time, I don't think I learned much that I couldn't
also have got from a really good MOOC class. (And from some college classes I
learned nothing at all.)

And yes, learning from great classmates and making relationships for life is
also invaluable, but that's not how most schools market themselves, nor why
most students choose to go.

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mathattack
I do see them hitting at the price point for all but the top schools, as they
should. MIT will always have a long line at the door waiting to pay full
price. Should Illinois Institute of Technology?

~~~
riggins
_Should Illinois Institute of Technology?_

it is certainly going to be interesting to watch. I'm a huge fan of MOOC's.
However I'd like to see some facts on their impact on employability so far.

~~~
mathattack
Indeed because having the fancy certificate can help get you into the
interview but its skills and personal fit that get you out.

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michaelochurch
The traditional undergraduate model (also, business school) adds almost no
value. I know this is a dickish thing to say, but let's look at it honestly.
First, the top universities admit people who least need to attend them. Most
admissions officers will admit that they want the kids who don't _need_ to go
to a prestigious college to be successful. Now, that's exactly what they
should do-- getting the best students means they get the best teachers and
researchers-- but it limits their value-add. They'd add more value (even if
it'd be the wrong thing to do) by admitting students who actually need them,
not the ones who don't.

In general, social transformations (education processes, jobs, mentorship
programs) converge on a state where those who can get the resources are those
who need them the least. That's not "wrong"; it's just the equilibrium. People
want to help those who don't need the help. It's human nature.

Now, one can argue that their value-add is inherent in what they do with those
talented people once they are in, but if you compare the cost of a four-year
degree and what is learned to what would be learned with that money, autonomy,
and time, I don't think the yield is better. Give a smart person 4 years of
extremely high autonomy, and that person will learn a lot and grow. The high
cost (in particular, opportunity cost) of university or college education
cancels out what is gained (to society, and the person) by attending.

What's exciting about MOOCs is that, by removing the scarcity and gatekeepers
and rising market tuitions that lead to a zero-value-add equilibrium, we
finally _are_ getting to a point where all of this stuff might genuinely add
value to the world. That will be an exciting thing to see.

~~~
VLM
"The traditional undergraduate model"

Probably meant to write something like:

"The traditional for profit elite/ivy league undergraduate model"

The local public unis and public community colleges operate under a different
model, eligibility seems solely limited by ability to attend. Which results in
a huge remedial issue; there are more remedial math students than "real" math
students...

