

San Jose State suspends online courses - ilamont
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Jose-State-suspends-online-courses-4672870.php

======
jimhefferon
I often read statements on this site that are like "I'm a super-motivated,
highly-performing driven person and I ought to be able to take Artificial
Intelligence from the Google Director of Search Technology and get credit for
that", with which I agree entirely.

But I teach at a college that is good but not (by various measures) first
tier. I've been teaching for more than 30 years, and I teach Calculus, and
while I have many students who do well, the majority of my folks find Calc to
be hard, very hard. So I perceive from the statement in the first paragraph
that many HN readers may have some trouble understanding who is in these
seats.

Perhaps half of the people in my class would have trouble writing down, say,
what an arctangent is. An even larger issue, it seems to me, is that they do
not have enough experience to know whether or not they understand something.
They are _not_ incapable dopes, but for instance if you go over homework
numbers 11, 13, 15, and 17 and say "Do you understand?" they will nod. But you
often find that if you ask them to do number 19, their pencil just hovers over
the page.

I see a couple of notes that argue something like "Well, they were given the
opportunity .." but that is too hard a line, for me, personally. They are good
people but they need support or guidance, over a medium-term period.

TLDR: for first-rate performers this is great stuff. For the middle of the
bell curve, not so much.

~~~
nudetayne
I don't know anything about your classes except for what's in your post, but
in my experience, most teachers who have this opinion of their students are
usually not aware that it may be their teaching style that results in basic
math classes being "hard". That teaching style typically boils down to
regurgitating what the book already provides, which isn't what students need.
I've also found that teachers who use that methodology don't actually know the
subject matter terribly well outside of whatever cookie-cutter textbook is
being used.

~~~
bilbo0s
I accidentally voted your comment up.

I meant to vote it down.

Calculus is not basic math. And many students find it difficult. I remember
Calculus 3, in particular, was hard for me. Now I look back at Green's
Theorem, Lagrange multipliers, Vector fields and surface integrals and it all
seems so basic. But that was NOT the case for the 17 year old me sitting in
that big lecture hall.

~~~
nudetayne
Thanks for mentioning the ever-important votes! They mean so much to me.

Many students find It difficult because they have bad teachers, bad textbooks,
or both. Also, in the future, spouting off math-related terms doesn't really
add anything to the discussion. Anyone can open a book and look at the table
of contents and copy some unfamiliar words down.

~~~
bilbo0s
Didn't mean to offend you guy.

As a rule, whenever I accidentally up or down vote someone, I leave a message
explaining the mistake and my reasoning. Doesn't happen often... but I always
thought of it as a courtesy. Again... no offense was intended.

On the question of math topics not adding anything to the discussion. Well,
we'll need to agree to disagree. The point was that Calculus... is NOT an easy
subject to learn. And you get a sense of how esoteric it seems to an initiate
by looking at the topics it encompasses.

Finally, try to relax a little man... no need to get snippy on HN. We should
be able to have a discussion on a, relatively uncontroversial topic, without
getting emotional.

~~~
nudetayne
You didn't offend me, I guess my sarcasm wasn't evident. I just find the
voting system to be pointless. I also don't know how you thought I was being
emotional.

As for calculus, it's incredibly easy to learn - you just need the correct
book. Most students don't know that unfortunately. Inventing calculus on the
other hand isn't easy, but fortunately most of that has been done for us.

------
mustpax
For the 44 to 24 percent of students who passed the course, this was not a
failure at all. I don't see why they should be denied access to education
because the likelihood of failing the course is higher. Online courses should
be offered cheaper than regular on-site courses to take the increased risk
into account, but that doesn't mean they should not be offered at all.

Many price points, many products.

~~~
glesica
But if your customers don't _understand_ the product then all bets are off and
you have a moral (and, frankly, self-serving) responsibility to explain the
product to them.

The way it sounds to me, SJSU and Udacity and are going to take the time to
study the data and figure out why it is that so many students failed. If, and
this seems pretty likely to me, it turns out that the students were confused
about the product (the courses) then I would imagine that steps will be taken
to clarify things so that people can make choices that will lead to the best-
possible outcomes.

Many price points, many products doesn't work if people don't understand the
products.

~~~
trevelyan
In the education market, customers do not know what they are purchasing by
definition. This is why there is so much crap in the industry -- companies
have an incentive to spend money on marketing rather than content.

The latest round of MOOCs are not really monetizing educational content (which
is and has been online elsewhere, often for free). They are packaging
institutional prestige, the same dynamic Facebook used to drive student
adoption. Khan Academy is the exception.

~~~
bayesianhorse
A lot of the material on coursera isn't that easily available for free. The
courses usually take a new and integrated aproach that you would see in a
university course, created and presented by an expert instructor. I don't care
for their prestige, but probably coursera is using the instutional prestige as
a selection criterion, and it works, mostly.

I also think Udacity is more in between Khan Academy and Coursera, in that
Udacity tries to find new ways of online instruction.

------
ritchiea
I'm distinctly of two minds about this. On one hand I believe interacting with
other people is essential to learning. That studying together, or talking
about a text, or hacking on a project together is where the best sort of
critical thinking germinates. In that sense I am happy to see some evidence in
favor of my hunch.

On the other hand, the course material that online classes are making
available for free is tremendously valuable. I've never finished an online
course but I have begun to regularly use online course materials as a
supplemental resource to books I'm reading and to projects I'm working on.

I'm concerned that enthusiasm for publishing course materials online will dry
up if evidence shows it's not a silver bullet for the world's higher education
problems. In other words, I'm concerned that expectations are far too high and
that educators and institutions are going to lose interest in a fantastic
innovation just because it doesn't solve all our problems.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Online courses don't discourage collaborative learning. In some cases, they
encourage it even.

On the other hand, if all your peers in your offline world don't care for your
courses at all, then solo studying is better than nothing...

~~~
EzGraphs
Online courses may not actively discourage collaboration, but they certainly
do not force it in the same way that is possible in a traditional classroom.
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge supporter of online courses. But a teacher
staring you down, asking you a question, or encouraging you to work on a
project in a small group is much more attention-grabbing than many online
teaching mechanisms available.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Most offline universitary education I have witnessed didn't work that way
though.

------
mililani
I just finished an online neuroanatomy class at SJSU this past week. This just
goes to show how dumb the kids have become in California's school systems. I
went back to school this past year to change careers into health care. I took
a year of pre-reqs at a local community college, and then this class as a pre-
req for my program.

It is shockingly absurd how easy and dumbed down they make classes in
California's lower echelon schools. They basically hand you everything you
need to know on every test on a silver platter: you don't need to read the
book; they give you a study guide and EXPLICITLY tell you what will and will
not be on the test; they sometimes will outright give you the exam questions,
and students STILL screw that up. I took an abnormal psychology class where
the instructor gave EVERYONE the exam questions, and students STILL did not
show up for the exam or got questions wrong. I was like, HOW THE HELL IS THIS
EVEN HAPPENING???!?!

I don't find this system of learning at fault. I find the students at fault. I
think they should fail these kids as a costly lesson: study or lose out on
$2000 bones. Bunch of nit wits.

~~~
stdbrouw
> I took an abnormal psychology class where the instructor gave EVERYONE the
> exam questions, and students STILL did not show up for the exam or got
> questions wrong.

This may not be what happened in your situation, but giving students every
possible exam question – with the caveat that there's a ton of them and they
have open-ended answers – is actually a really smart thing to do. Anyone who
wants to pass the exam will spend an inordinate amount of time crafting the
perfect answers (either by themselves or in groups, which is fine) and then
memorizing those. You could even say it gamifies the learning process, as
every day of study you're keen to get through as many questions as possible.
It's almost like being asked to write a 100 mini-essays. You end up learning
more, not less.

~~~
mililani
I wish that were true. The questions required simple one word or one sentence
answers. It was absurd.

------
volandovengo
I recently interviewed many students who were taking online classes as opposed
to in person classes.

I was surprised to learn that most chose to do them online so that they can
cheat on the tests. Free from instructor supervision all tests were open book
and thus were much easier than taking them in person.

While many of us have high ideals for online education, I've learned that the
majority of students get a degree for the diploma first and the education
second.

~~~
prostoalex
I don't think with SJSU set up there was ever an assumption that the tests
were going to be online.

What's surprising is that three months ago we've heard a completely different
story:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/education/colleges-
adapt-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/education/colleges-adapt-online-
courses-to-ease-burden.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2&pagewanted=all&)

"Usually, two of every five students earn a grade below C and must retake the
course or change career plans. So last spring, Ellen Junn, the provost,
visited Anant Agarwal, an M.I.T. professor who taught a free online version of
the circuits class, to ask whether San Jose State could become a living lab
for his course, the first offering from edX, an online collaboration of
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

...

The results were striking: 91 percent of those in the blended section passed,
compared with 59 percent in the traditional class."

~~~
lnanek2
Even this current article says the edX courses did better and aren't being
canceled like the Udacity ones...

~~~
psbp
The Udacity ones seemed to be targeted to a less motivated demographic. I
don't think this a conceptual failure, but a practical one.

------
simonv3
Failure rates that high are normal at many European universities. The idea
there often is "let many people in, but let them fail out if they don't make
the cut".

Not everyone is suited to some of the rigours of higher education, and when
you make it freely available, more people are going to try it out, and more
people are going to fail. I wouldn't call a 58% failure rate a bad thing.

~~~
ics
My understanding is that the failure they're referring to is among those
paying the $150 to take the course for credit. I agree with your point
(presumably many taking the course, free or otherwise, aren't college
students) but this would be an important distinction.

------
tlrobinson
I'm surprised there's no mention of the San Jose State professors who came out
against MOOCs a few months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644421)

[http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_23320596/online-
educ...](http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_23320596/online-education-
debate-san-jose-state-professors-see)

I'm sure this is _entirely_ unrelated...

------
michaelrbock
As some who really enjoys online courses, this is really disappointing news. I
know it takes a huge amount of dedication to finish an online class
(especially a free one where the cost of dropping out is zero). Hopefully
Udacity et al can figure out the pedagogy before the Georgia Tech online CS
masters begins ([http://www.omscs.gatech.edu](http://www.omscs.gatech.edu)).

~~~
bayesianhorse
The behavior of students won't change quickly, maybe not at all. The outside
expectations might have to be lowered. Maybe a diagnostic exam should be
offered.

~~~
michaelrbock
From what I understand, the admission criteria for the GT OMS is that one is
accepted conditionally until he/she passes 2 courses with a B or better, and
then is fully admitted.

------
gadgetdevil
A bigger red flag would be if almost all of the students passed the final. I'm
not an advocate for deliberately failing students: the exam should be designed
so that an A shows true mastery and understanding.

~~~
psbp
Many of my university's teachers took pride in their low pass rates. Not
because they failed so many students, but because they passed a minority that
had truly mastered the material.

~~~
voyou
The job of a university teacher is to help students learn - if a student fails
the class, then the teacher has failed to do their job. Sure, it's possible
that some of the blame for that failure may lie with the student, but
nonetheless, the teacher still failed to achieve what they set out to do. A
teacher failing a student is like a programmer shipping buggy software - it
may be the case that, because of circumstances beyond your control (incomplete
specs or dysfunctional management; unmotivated students or weak syllabuses),
you couldn't do your best work in a particular instance, and you don't
necessarily need to feel guilty about that; but you shouldn't be _proud_ of
it.

~~~
Jach
The problem with this point of view is that X classes are taken in parallel.
So you start getting competition among the managers/teachers for your time, as
each one understands that "spend all your time on just my class, my suggested
resources, and as much time with just me as you need" will lead to the optimal
amount of help they can give. They can't do any more as ultimately it's the
student's job to learn and the transfer of tacit knowledge is incredibly
difficult -- you can lead a horse to water etc. Some teachers give up on doing
anything important around the crunch times, knowing they can't win (typically
humanities teachers at a primarily technical or engineering or project-based
school), some teachers just lessen the load as much as they're comfortable
with, others take an "I'm the most important and difficult" attitude and the
only one who will get an A will be the one who got an F in at least one other
class.

I wish schools would restructure to be serial with context-dependent
branching, much like learning on the job tends to be, that way you can spend Y
weeks focusing intently on a small spectrum of topics, then move on. Some
classes are 3 hours every week for 12ish weeks, if you serialized that you
could be done in 12 days. Plus the student and the professor would be in
harmony, each having the other's undivided attention.

------
rtcoms
According to me, examination system for online courses would be better like
GRE system. Student should be allowed to take course from anywhere but he
should go to the authorized center for exam.

------
nazgulnarsil
That's not much worse than the STEM failure rates of live attendance students.

Source: I attend SJSU.

~~~
codezero
For introductory undergraduate courses?

~~~
oblique63
I wouldn't be surprised. I attended the neighboring SF State and it's bad over
there too. Many people fail out of the CS 101 course (including aspiring CS
majors), and the Calculus 1 course offerings all the time. What I find more
troubling however, is that we have a significant portion of the student body
failing and retaking remedial Algebra I and II classes (to the point where
sections for those two classes alone outnumber pretty much all other math
classes -- despite Calc and Stats courses being required for everybody), and
that many have a similarly hard time meeting even the basic English
requirements to graduate.

This is a serious problem that goes well beyond the supposed student
'laziness' theory that's so popular here on HN. Clearly our lower levels of
education are screwing students up. Most of the students that get into college
are seriously ill-prepared, and universities have taken it upon themselves to
compensate for this by offering several remedial courses and lowering grading
standards.

It may be tempting to suggest that universities just stop doing this, but
we've got to remember that our society values that degree way too much to ever
let them get away with that (just imagine the revolt if all the colleges
across the country started drastically lowering their acceptance rates). This
sort of mindless degree-worship is silly on it's own, but it allows
universities to grab money from otherwise under-qualified students, and who's
gonna make a peep about that?

------
microtherion
A 83% completion rate is actually extremely high for a MOOC course, typical
rates are less than 10%:

[http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html](http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html)

Presumably, the fee charged led to many borderline cases sticking out the
course, but then flunking the final.

------
brianherbert
I know this is a different situation but...

I completed half of an MBA program in the classroom (1+ yrs), then moved out
of state and had to switch to an online program at another university, both of
which were AACSB accredited.

I must say, the online program was much more challenging, from almost all
areas like personal responsibility, participation and academic rigor. The only
area that could use improvement is testing, where some professors would prefer
multiple choice questions, but this is a problem in any program.

Regarding the San Jose classes, I think a lot of undergraduate courses
essentially run on autopilot so if a student isn't interested, of course they
aren't going to learn anything.

------
mathattack
One could say that 22-44% is actually a much higher pass rate than most MOOCs,
and this was a success. It's just that the school is stuck in an old way of
thinking. What's wrong with using on-line courses to see where people stand
out? Perhaps let them avoid Fs on their report card if they drop out soon
enough. (This is true for many normal classes too) Designed right, the
feedback mechanisms should empower the middle tier students too.

------
johnohara
AP Computer Science is supposed to be a college-level Intro to Computer
Science for high school students. In 2012, 26,103 AP CS students took the
exam. 63.6% received a "3" or above, meaning colleges accepting AP scores
probably awarded credit.

It also means 36.4% probably didn't receive credit.

A "3" sits on the bubble. Since AP scores are "recommendations of
proficiency", not final exam grades in the traditional sense, students with
"3's" are often advised to reconsider taking the course again. It depends on
the school of course, but nobody complains. That's how it works.

Adding the 15.6% of students with a "3" to the 36.4% means 52% of students
might not be "proficient" by definition.

The San Jose State numbers aren't shocking, they're about right given the
total population. Plus, looking at the courses and the material, I'm willing
to bet 40% drop the traditional class before the final anyway. Are they
included in SJSU's comparative statistic?

------
Fuxy
I would like to see how many students represent the 44 to 24 percent.

If it's a couple hundred I wouldn't consider it failure.

Plus has anybody considered the fact that some people (like me) consider exams
just way for professors/everybody to keep stats on how the class is doing and
me taking the exam doesn't help me at all with learning what i wanted to learn
from the course.

I have taken a lot of online courses because i was interested in the subject
did the small tests sprinkled in because i found the vaguely useful never took
the exams.

I like the small details/intricacies being pointed out to me in the tests but
I'm not going to bother remembering it all just the knowledge of it being
there is enough I'll look up the details when i need it.

------
ZanyProgrammer
I'm not sure if people realize (in general) how difficult online courses are
in general, compared to in person classes. Not everyone is an aspiring hacker
who is smart and disciplined and posts on HN. Online classes have long been
shown to be more difficult than their in person counterparts.

------
winstonian
> "We are experimenting and learning. That to me is a positive," Thrun said.

Lulz.

~~~
ramblerman
what are you laughing at exactly?

~~~
glesica
I personally found the quote to be in poor taste to a certain extent. He's
talking about experimenting with people's lives. Yes, the students agreed, at
least in some sense, to be a part of the experiment, but it is still a rather
callous response in my mind.

~~~
cjfont
I basically came here to say this, as that comment stuck out from the article
for me. I was thinking, that it must be nice to experiment using students'
tuition money. I'm pretty sure the student didn't expect to be part of an
experiment when they signed up.

