
The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever - nigma
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass
======
dlo
I want to address the following quote from the article: "During the fall term,
the Stanford students taking CS221 preferred watching the KnowLabs videos.
Thrun says this improved their performance."

I took the official Stanford offering this past fall. I am not a Stanford
student (anymore), but I enrolled as part of SCPD. As a result of the official
course starting two weeks earlier than the public offering, the course staff
usually didn't post up the YouTube videos in time for me to do the
assignments, so I relied primarily on the lectures. (Actually, as a distance
student, I relied upon the lecture recordings.)

I eventually did catch up on the YouTube videos, and I can attest that they
are indeed better. However, they produced superior results mainly because they
covered more material. For example, in one case, I did over two pages of
error-prone calculations because I didn't know the mathematical shortcut that
was taught in the YouTube videos. And I gasped as the professors spelled out
in detail how to do problems that I had to think hard about how to do. Indeed,
one problem that I was pleasantly challenged by on the midterm was simply not
covered in lecture; in contrast, the professors explained it tutorial-style on
YouTube.

Using the terminology of the course, I would say that the YouTube videos
"overfitted" to the homework and exam problems -- so of course the students
preferred the videos!

I do suspect that short, interactive, and extremely polished videos will be
proven to be better in most cases, but unfortunately this experiment cannot be
used as a basis for forming that conclusion. Clearly, the lectures were
handicapped.

And to be honest, I am skeptical of how videos would perform against some of
the tremendously excellent lectures out there, such as the introductory
computer science lectures that are posted at Stanford Engineering Everywhere.

With all this said, I had a great deal of fun taking this course. I applaud
the course staff for doing a stellar job, and I am grateful to be part of what
I am certain will be a historical experiment.

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vixen99
'Only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education'?

Not unless universities abandon the teaching of history, literature,
philosophy, politics, economics, whatever etc., or perhaps Thrun is thinking
they'll be a gigantic leap forward in developing machine intelligence able for
instance to assess students' essays in these subjects. If anyone's seen the
slightest evidence that this might happen I'd be more than interested to see
it.

~~~
sidww2
Indeed. And not just those subjects. Computers are still a very long way off
from judging the correctness of say a human written proof or solution to a
physics problem. Even in technical subjects universities will be impossible to
replace without major major leaps in AI.

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kulkarnic
I think education at a great University provides primarily four benefits:

1\. Great instructor-driven education 2\. Great student peer-group-- folks
that are truly smarter than you and teach you to think in ways you hadn't
imagined (and those you pay attention to, because they might someday change
the world) 3\. Great networks/connections and maybe even a brand 4\. An
opportunity to immerse in great research.

I think online education courses do a great job of approximating 1. They sort
of try to do 2. And they fail at 3.

I don't point this out to say "yes, online ed. could change higher learning
forevermore" or "no, this is a flash in the pan", but to highlight that
traditional Universities do have a role-- they may simply be a place where
people watch online videos and build stuff together, but they add value beyond
a guy in his den watching a video (to be poetic predictions of the death of
traditional learning are greatly exaggerated).

e.g. As a Stanford student, (1) above is certainly lowest on my list of great-
things-Stanford-provides. (2) is high, and so is infrastructure. On (4), I
think the Gates building has a astoundingly high great-ideas/sq-m. None of
these can be replicated online easily.

~~~
rgoddard
But not all colleges and universities are at the same level as Stanford. The
idea is to provide higher quality education to a larger group of people who
might not otherwise not be able to receive it.

As you state, this cannot replace the benefit of putting a whole bunch of
smart and motivated people in close physical proximity, but can complement
other programs or help other students achieve a better education then would
otherwise be possible.

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dinkumthinkum
I think this is great and having such high quality level instructors is very
good. However, I'd caution the typical view nowadays, especially around here,
that this signals the end of traditional college and that we should just throw
it out.

~~~
steveissuperman
I agree. I don't know about computer science students, but as a civil
engineering student college means a whole lot more to me than just being
lectured at. I'm involved in half a dozen student organizations, and a lot of
the time I find myself learning more outside the classroom working with
professors and other students on competition teams and organizations than I am
in class. It's sad that so many people think watching videos can teach them as
much as actually plugging into a real life program with other students and
experience faculty to interact with. I think it shows there's something wrong
with how most people are approaching college in general.

~~~
VIlonis
I agree that what students do outside the classroom is as important, if not
more important, than the lectures. However, going through the lectures, in
person or through a video, lessens the learning curve for critical skills that
are a prerequisite to outside the classroom learning experiences. In other
words, these videos give everyone who watches them an opportunity to engage in
the next level of learning.

I believe it is possible that with these prerequisites moved outside of
universities, it becomes possible for more group learning experiences, not
unlike those you experienced with professors and other students, to become
available to everyone. Currently, the latter is only available (mostly) to
students at a university.

People don't (read: shouldn't) think that all it takes to become a computer
scientist or civil engineer is to watch a few videos. They definitely know
that they can't without learning the concepts in those videos, allowing
themselves to become more involved with real challenges in the field and
further their educations.

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dan-k
As a replacement for the university, I think this is actually moving in
exactly the wrong direction. We've already tried more centralized education
(e.g. standardized testing), and it doesn't work. The quality of education any
given student receives is proportional to the level to which that education
can be personalized to match their interests, abilities, learning styles, etc.
Decreasing faculty-student ratios means decreasing personalization. It's just
a losing proposition all around.

This sort of system seems more like a replacement for the textbook to me.
Traditional textbooks serve the purpose of giving both the instructor and
students in a class access to the knowledge of the experts on a subject. This
is simply a more interactive way of getting that expert information. Then the
personalized part of the education can kick in and not have to worry about
helping students memorize basic facts.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
But online courses actually give you more options as far as personalizing
education. At most universities, unless they're very large or very
specialized, you're likely to have one professor from a specific subject in a
field. With online lectures, even from a reasonably small number of sources
you can mix and match. Two personal examples I can think of is supplementing
my algorithms class with MIT's algorithms class on OCW, and watching Tom
Mitchell's lecture on kernel functions to add depth to the topic as covered in
Ng's Ml-class.

Even at great universities there are professors who are better researchers
than teaches that still may be a students only option. If you took the top 10,
or even 5 teachers on a given subject you could give students the freedom to
mix and match as suited their learning style.

Personally I actually find the lectures a poor substitute for a text. I find
the Probabilistic Graphical Models textbook a great addition to the pgm class
on coursera. Even though the lectures for pgm-class are long and detail,
there's still only so much information you can get into a few hours. The
information density of a textbook is hard to beat.

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blahedo
One of the dirty little secrets (ok, not really a secret) of the education
_system_ (higher or otherwise) is that it's not just about helping the
students learn, but also verifying that they have done so and credentialing
them. Online education can potentially be pretty good at helping students
learn (although, even at that, it's much weaker at helping the less-self-
motivated students learn; you might regard that as either a plus or a minus, I
suppose).

It's a lot less good at verifying it, especially if there's credentialing
involved. As soon as the verification becomes high-stakes (due to a resultant
credential---grade, course credit, etc), cheating becomes a big problem, and
one not easily surmounted within the context of the online learning
environments that have sprung up so far.

So if something like Thrun's class is really going to "change higher learning
forever", one of those changes may have to be a separation of the
teaching/learning component and the verification/credentialing component. The
teachers could then say, learn it or don't, I'll help but I'm not your
taskmaster... and then if the students want to prove to anyone else that they
learned something from it, they have to figure out some other way to do that,
because transcripts won't cut it.

Actually, I could kind of get behind that.

~~~
capsule_toy
There are already systems in place to handle verified testing, like GRE and
CPA exams. There are online courses that have homework and reading components
online, but test offline.

For non-tests, students can and do cheat at regular Universities.

I completely agree that for this system to work, a verification/credentialing
component is needed and I actually believe that the money will be there. Give
away the lectures and problem assignments but make money off of more personal
tutoring and the credentials.

------
mas644
What's most interesting and beautiful about the concept of free, open
education is that people that would not have access to a college education can
now have it. I'm talking about people that are the poorest of the poor who
would never see a university let alone be able to attend one. A lot of folks
on here are talking about certification...certification doesn't matter, rather
creating wealth matters! We're on YC Hacker News right now, I'm sure everybody
has read Paul Graham's "How To Create Wealth" essay
(<http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>). A person with a college degree or
higher is useless to society if they can't produce something with it. However,
somebody with little or zero formal education that can create something world
changing IS valuable! Just giving people access to information allows them to
change their world and create wealth. Some of you may have heard of William
Kamkwamba (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kamkwamba>) who created a
windmill that could generate electricity just after seeing a picture of a
windmill on the cover of a book written in a language he couldn't read. I saw
an interview with him on "The Daily Show" where he joked that when he had the
opportunity to access the Internet for the first time, he typed "windmill"
into Google and was like "where was this when I was trying to build that damn
windmill?!". People like him can do so much just with a picture -- imagine if
he had access to science and math lectures from an amazing university like
Stanford.

We have finally reached that point (or are at least damn close to it) where
virtually every person on the planet, no matter how poor, will have access to
a computer and the Internet. That is all a person needs to access these
resources. I'm sure everybody has been following the Raspberry Pi, a full-
fledged computer with video output for $25 - and it's only going to get
cheaper. People like Thruun and Khan are dead-on. The only way to get people
out of poverty is by empowering them with knowledge and education. In my
opinion, the work these folks are doing are the seeds of a coming worldwide
renaissance where poverty and ignorance will be eliminated.

------
samrat
For me to get a Statement of Accomplishment, will I have to go along with the
course or can I start later and still get it. I'm interested in CS101 but the
course is already in its fifth week.

~~~
MaxGabriel
A new class of CS101 starts April 16th

~~~
nosecreek
What is your source for this? I signed up for the class before the new year
and got an email in February saying the class would be delayed until the
second half of March and I would be notified two weeks in advance of the class
start. I haven't heard anything since then and the cs101 site doesn't appear
to have any more information.

~~~
MaxGabriel
I assumed samrat was referring to Udacity's CS101 course, because it is in its
fifth week. I don't know about Coursera's CS101 course.

I will say that my friend just started taking Udacity's CS101 course, and he
really loves it. I think they have a much better model for teaching a 101
course than Coursera* because you transition immediately from learning
something to coding it and having your work checked.

* Disclaimer that I haven't looked at Coursera's CS101 course, only their other courses, but am presuming they're using the same technology.

~~~
nosecreek
OK, that makes sense. I wasn't aware of the Udacity course. I will have to
check it out, as it is looking like the timing of the Stanford one might not
work out for me. Do they start new classes fairly often? I can't seem to find
the schedule on their site.

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wyclif
Coursera vs. MITx. Any views?

~~~
useful
Coursera, I'm doing the NLP class but it is just a guy writing equations on a
chalkboard. The class would be much better if he used plain english to explain
his equations instead of reading off the slide.

MITx, I gave up on the electronics course because I can't read the guys
handwriting and I didn't like the labs. The book is also in the worst format
I've ever seen but at least it's free.

~~~
Joeboy
> Coursera, I'm doing the NLP class but it is just a guy writing equations on
> a chalkboard

I'm doing the NLP class too. The professors go through the material pretty
rapidly and sometimes you have to fill in some gaps yourself, but "just a guy
writing equations on a chalkboard" isn't an accurate description.

