

Daphne Koller of Stanford AI Lab on online education - robrenaud
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/daphne-koller-technology-as-a-passport-to-personalized-education.html?ref=science

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davekinkead
I think this type of learning will be considerably more effective in
quantitative subjects than qualitative ones. Maths especially but essentially
any subject that has 'right' answers lends its self well to this as content
and tests can be automated algorithmically.

I'm curious however to see how this works in humanity type subjects that
require more critical thinking and higher order reasoning. These seem to me to
still require human interpretation in order to assess understanding.

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lmcglone
Perhaps it's easier to conceptualize how to structure classes that are
quantitative and that's where the technology will move first. Also, the people
with the talent to create the software might have a bias toward the
qualitative subjects. The later will be a much harder problem to solve, but
any student who has experienced the feeling of being a few steps ahead or
behind the rest of the class would benefit from blended learning in any
subject.

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choxi
I think the first step is to just put the content online, which is what Kahn
Academy does. The next step is to make the content interactive and gamified,
and also have a sandboxed playground to test new ideas in.

I think coding is the new literacy which is why I'm working on
www.trybloc.com, to me that level of instant feedback and interactivity is
where the real innovation is.

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roguecoder
I'm sure we've all experienced the HR videos with the questions at the end of
each section to make sure you didn't just leave it running while you watched
The Big Bang theory. Do we really think kids are going to become more engaged
if school is more like an HR training session?

I do agree that lectures make no sense at all (the were pioneered when books
were extremely expensive to reproduce; books are now free to reproduce), but I
think limiting ourselves to "lectures, only now not live so we don't have to
pay teachers and with extra busywork tests" isn't going to revolutionize the
field unless all we care about is cutting spending further.

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brown9-2
The Stanford class videos are not at all like what you are referring to.

The difference between HR videos and lecture videos like what Stanford is
doing now is huge - the people watching the HR videos don't want to be there.
People that signed up for the Stanford classes are interested students, which
makes all the difference in the world.

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stfu
So true. Someone should look at learning tools and systems from the "customer"
perspective. Are they already interested/willing to learn? How hard is it to
motivate them?

I think we all had these moments when we really wanted to learn something.
Than the medium of delivery is more or less the least important aspect of it.

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tryitnow
I tried out the database class, but didn't follow through with it because I
found myself just teaching myself through looking things up online anyways
(i.e. W3C tutorials, free online textbooks, etc).

I didn't find the class itself terribly worthwhile, but I was impressed with
the quizes/tests/assignemnts. They seemed like a great way to evaluate whether
or not you've learned something.

It's hard to describe, but it seems like they really got this part right, at
least based on my limited experience with the DB class.

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marshallp
The central concept in this which was not mentioned was gamification.
Education needs to be gamified, ie. every small step about it needs to be
quantified, the student needs to receive instant feedback, the "game
designer/educator" needs to see the data and improve the game.

Somewhere along the line the education system came to be about competition,
who scores the highest gets to brag he's the cleverest and somehow superior.
Instead, it should be about gaining competency in a fun way. Doesn't matter
whether students reach it at 15 or 25 or older. (separate issue, but the core
competency everyone in society should have nowadays is the ability to program
in python).

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rgraham
Gamification is a gimmick that can add value when the people are already
engaged, but you can't make people interested in education because you can get
points or win a badge. They had to want to be there in the first place.

Some fields lend themselves to domain experts who can write software making
large leaps in productivity, but many do not. There are a lot of desirable
skills I'd prefer the education system teach before Python. In the end, I
think you want a society where anyone with the need or interest can go learn
it on their own. This presents a huge educational challenge that we should try
to fix as best we can, but this problem will never be completely solved. We
should use our resources to improve things as best we can.

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marshallp
how about paying real money as points. money has been shown to motivate
students to learn. gamification is not a gimmick, it is a rephrasing of an old
idea - feedback. all animals operate on instant/constant feedback. it's only
in humans that the ability to operate without this is present, and it's a
mistake to force everyone, including to children to operate in this
feedbackless manner.

