

Udacity and the future of online universities - iamabhi9
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/udacity-and-the-future-of-online-universities/

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ramanujan
Part of the backstory here is that ai-class.com is by Udacity (Sebastian
Thrun), while ml-class.org and pgm-class.org are by Coursera (Andrew Ng and
Daphne Koller). Formerly colleagues from the same department, now competitors
with very similar education startups, all the way down to the naming
conventions. Lot of fur flying about who copied who.

Coursera has been launching a ton of classes[1]. Probably Sebastian feels that
to beat Andrew and Daphne, he has to go full time.

[1] <http://www.cs101-class.org/hub.php>

~~~
gallamine
So, does this explain the unexpected delay of the Spring ML-Class? I haven't
heard any news until a few days ago when I got an email saying there were
delays in starting the new semester.

~~~
dangoldin
I'm interested in this question too. Two of my classes both sent the same type
of email. I'd be very surprised if these aren't related.

~~~
alexsb92
All of the January classes have sent out the same email. Been receiving them
for the last few days.

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mtrn
Took the AI class and it was just amazing. I never had a professor more
passionate (yet still rational :) about a subject.

Even though the course made the math and the background sound simple, it
wasn't. There is a probably thin line between breaking-down things into a set
of well-partitioned and easy to understand statements and oversimplifying
really complex systems.

Also, the applications (edge detectors, robotic cars, particle filter based
localizations, ...) kept me very motivated throughout the course.

~~~
riffraff
having taken all three classes (AI, DB, ML), I have to point out that in my
opinion (and that of other people I spoke with) ai-class was _by far_ the
worsely organized, passion of the teachers notwithstanding.

But I am sure Know Labs learned a lot from it and they can only improve.

~~~
LaGrange
The website itself sucked, the quizzes weren't very usable, but the videos
themselves were wonderful — in my opinion the best. And I wouldn't be
surprised if that was the part that's hardest to improve on, and also the most
important one.

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silverlake
It looks like Khan Academy for college-level, semester long classes. He should
target the University of Phoenix's crappy online program. Their parent
company, the Apollo Group, has a market cap of $7B. Thrun could easily take a
huge bite out of that.

~~~
etrain
While I agree that a new education startup could go after something like the
University of Phoenix, I'm not sure that Thrun and his crew are going for
that.

To me, the University of Phoenix represents a credential factory. People see
that all the jobs they want require a college degree, and so they go the
easiest route to get that. I don't believe that University of Phoenix (or most
of the other big for-profit names) have a strong interest in educating people,
nor do I think that their customers are really interested in getting an
education - instead they're interested in getting a piece of paper that says
they're qualified to do the job they want.

Thrun seems to have far more noble, though possibly less profitable, goals in
mind.

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sown
I think Stanford is more for keeping things closer to the status quo. Students
in seats is how they make their money, after all. Not to say that they won't
make courses online. I think they would be more than happy to charge $5,000
like they do through SCPD. However, if this develops the way I think it does,
the economies of scale have to take over, right, especially after reading
about Professor Norvig's discussion last month
(<http://remotelearningproject.com/interviews/peter-norvig/>) about potential
business models that try to keep it mostly free.

I'm very excited.

PS: I've noted that the PGM course website says it'll start in Feburary.

~~~
klipt
> the economies of scale have to take over, right

Assuming there's enough competition, yes.

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dhawalhs
I have built something to keep track of all these courses <http://www.class-
central.com>. Currently tracking just Coursera(Stanford's online learning
initiative) courses, but would be adding UDACITY and MITx courses(when they
are announced) soon.

~~~
adambyrtek
It would be great if you could provide a RSS feed with course announcements.

~~~
dhawalhs
The Facebook page has an option to get posts as RSS feeds. Here is the link :
[https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=305891199451158&#...</a>.

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ap22213
I hope this is just a first step toward big future ideas.

Many highly sought professors already have great brands, and I'm surprised
that they are so highly underpaid for what they do. Many of them could be
getting paid a lot more in scale. Further, they could also be providing value-
add services to directly validate some of the best on-line students and grant
certifications of expertise. Think of the mozilla badge model [1]. There are
hundreds of ways to spin out revenue and scale that model.

[1] <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/About>

~~~
justnearme
The average salary of a professor at Stanford is $148,000. I think it's
unfortunate that he had to step away from the possibility of influencing those
who do make it to Stanford in favor of catering to the world. It's great that
he does so, but there's also plenty of reasons why he would be affecting many
different minds at Stanford.

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/14/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/14/MNGEKIRLKU1.DTL)

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andreyf
The actual website is here: <http://www.udacity.com/>

For those interested, looks like they're offering two classes (CS101: Building
a Search Engine and CS373: Programming a Robotic Car) starting in February and
hiring actively, as well (<http://www.udacity.com/jobs>).

~~~
pheaduch
Anyone else having issues signing up to the classes?

~~~
jasonMalcolmHz
I managed to sign up. (browser Chrome)

~~~
maxgaudin
Can't enroll with Chrome or Firefox. Their site is all kinds of broken right
now.

~~~
jasonMalcolmHz
I enrolled with Chrome 7.0.517.44 on Ubuntu 10.04 from the UK no problem.

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johngalt
Prof. Thrun is an _amazing_ teacher, but I think the 160,000 student sign-ups
were due to the Stanford affiliation. Giving up that affiliation will cut
enrollement sharply. Any likely business model will cause another sharp
decline in enrollment. Thrun has all the right ideas, but on his own it will
be tough to execute.

Education is ripe for disruption. Thrun+Ng+Norvig+Stanford as a cohesive team
could have made a _history altering_ change in education. It's unfortunate
that they aren't a team.

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johnohara
It all comes down to certifying student proficiency (course credit).

Udacity and Coursera are not really competitors in the area of course content.
They are competitors in the area of student certification. In the reputation
behind the process. Meaning rigorous final exams, independently administered,
suitable for inclusion on curricula vitae, etc.

By offering courses for free, Udacity and Coursera compete directly with
Stanford. But Stanford can compete with them just as well, by allowing
students to enroll in the free classes, mentoring them, and then offering
their own certification exams -- for credit.

My guess is they won't do that. They'll just find someone else to teach the
course. But I bet in the future they intend to keep a very close eye on the
department.

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jasonMalcolmHz
Since doing the online AI course, I have been hoping Thrun would teach
Robotics.

I have signed up - woohoo. It looks awesome - I am stoked - Sebastian Thrun is
an amazing teacher, he really makes me think hard and gives me the scaffolding
to investigate further on my own.

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lazerwalker
What I find problematic about all of these new online education startups
(Udacity, Khan Academy, etc) is that they tackle the problem by simply
providing online equivalents to traditional didactic learning methods like
lectures and textbooks.

A professor standing in front of a group of students lecturing is definitely
easy for the professor and cost-efficient to scale up to larger class sizes,
but that's just not how a lot of students learn. I'd wager that most HNers
learned programming through actually writing code, even those who learned CS
through a formal program. In the humanities, I'd argue that the most effective
way to learn is through small discussion groups, not a distinguished professor
explaining literature or philosophical works to you. Just throwing that up on
the internet is an easy way to expand your audience, but providing higher-
quality educational materials doesn't do anything to improve the quality of
_how_ we educate.

The internet has a lot of potential to improve the quality of education, and
there are tons of awesome startups working on it (companies like Codecademy
and Coursekit come to mind), but I personally hope the future of online
education doesn't look too much like Udacity.

~~~
aik
I agree, but it does provide value beyond a simple real-life lecture, most
notably the fact that you can go at your own pace and rewind/replay at any
point. This is huge. In addition, the lectures are much shorter for the most
part, which also makes a significant difference.

Concerning the importance of discussion groups, face-to-face interaction, and
networking opportunities -- those things are necessary in certain cases, but
not all. The courses currently being offered through these sites are most
often the ones that don't necessary benefit hugely from these real-life
components.

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iamabhi9
<http://robots.stanford.edu/>

~~~
jasonMalcolmHz
This link is down

cache available by robots.stanford

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waterlesscloud
I wonder if his departure has anything to do with the delay of the other
courses? Maybe he took some students/staff/resources with him that were key to
the infrastructure?

~~~
amirmc
The other courses (i.e ML and DB) seemed to have a different arrangement. The
slew of new classes seemed to be following the same arrangement as ML/DB
rather than AI.

~~~
iamabhi9
Though as far as I know there was this idea of using Aiqus as the discussion
forum platform for all the courses, rather than each course having its own
separate forum. Aiqus was used by AI class during last session.

Although I am not aware who was behind the development and operation of Aiqus.

~~~
amirmc
> _there was this idea of using Aiqus as the discussion forum platform for all
> the courses_

Not sure if you're referring to the current bunch of courses or the first
three (AI/ML/DB). I'm assuming it's the latter. Aiqus was only used for the AI
class. IIRC it was set up independently but someone before the course began
and ended up being the pseudo-official Q&A forum (linked to from the main
site).

~~~
iamabhi9
ok, I was not aware that Aiqus was independent of the AI class. Though one of
the developers of Aiqus posted in an unofficial FB group of AI class that all
the rest of the courses will also use Aiqus during the next session.

~~~
streptomycin
Interesting that they seem to have tried to sell Aiqus recently..
[https://flippa.com/2673719-q-a-site-on-artificial-
intelligen...](https://flippa.com/2673719-q-a-site-on-artificial-intelligence-
with-approx-1-million-pageviews-last-month)

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ilamont
Relevant to this article is a blog post written by a Stanford Student taking
the machine learning class:

[http://pennyhacks.com/2011/12/28/stanford-free-classes-a-
rev...](http://pennyhacks.com/2011/12/28/stanford-free-classes-a-review-from-
a-stanford-student/)

HN discussion here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3399976>

~~~
justnearme
Also if I may make a shameless plug for mine:

[http://www.rioleo.org/a-reflection-on-stanfords-ai-class-
db-...](http://www.rioleo.org/a-reflection-on-stanfords-ai-class-db-class.php)

Ironic, I just posted this 3 days ago.

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melling
What happens to the self-driving car? That was his life's dream.

~~~
AdamTReineke
In a few years, he'll teach a class on that too and... mission accomplished!
;-)

~~~
nluqo
Not in a few years, but in one month:

CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car <http://youtu.be/aI8SQCEUYrg>

