

Udacity Cancels Free Online Math Course, Citing Low Quality - ilamont
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/udacity-cancels-free-online-math-course-citing-lack-of-quality/38998?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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carlesfe
Great, here's a discussion I've wanted to have for a long time.

I very much appreciate the effort, but quoting yesterday's phk article,
"Quality happens only when someone is responsible for it". In another
yesterday's news, on Reddit they are starting to build yet another online
university.

Don't take me wrong, I actively search for information on the Internet, follow
many tutorials and even wrote some. I absolutely advocate for researching
something on the net before buying a book. But when it comes to university-
like education, well, only Universities currently provide it.

Some months ago I looked for courses on iOS programming for a personal
project. After following some video tutorials, HOWTOs on blogs, and even "free
courses", the only thing that has really taught me anything has been
Stanford's iOS course. And I can't even be sure if I learned everything,
because nobody graded me.

If nobody is grading you (a professor, a tutor, a supervisor, a boss, a
customer), how do you know if you education is correct?

"Online universities" already exist. There is one very close to home[1] and
its degrees are as accepted as any other regular university. The point is, you
have to pay for them. You have to pay for the professors to prepare the
courses, to correct the exams, to write material for you.

I would honestly love to hear from somebody who has powerful arguments which
can support a free, high quality, online university-like studies. I just can't
think of how that is possible.

Anything else is, at least, an abuse of the word "University"

[1] <http://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/index.html>

~~~
lesterbuck
I have taken several of these online courses, and I think we will look back in
fifty years and see an inflection point in massively distributing higher
education happened in the fall of 2011. The margin of this web page does not
contain enough space for me to explain how much I disagree with the general
comments expressed here.

 _And I can't even be sure if I learned everything, because nobody graded me._

 _If nobody is grading you (a professor, a tutor, a supervisor, a boss, a
customer), how do you know if you education is correct?_

Really? I mean, really? If I ever think I don't understand something, it's
rather easy to turn to someone next to me and try to teach them. Or any number
of dozens of tactics to make sure my knowledge map is self-consistent.

I'd imagine that needing someone to grade one's work must be one of the most
constricting world views there can be. How can you come up with radical new
ideas if they have to be graded by some knowledge gate-keeper? What if you are
thinking way beyond your "grader's" level?

~~~
wtvanhest
Radical new ideas are graded by the market.

Want a seed round? Your idea will be graded by angels.

Want a venture round? Your idea will be graded by VCs.

Want some revenue? Graded by users.

Want to IPO? Graded by mutual funds analysts.

I bet there are lots of people watching videos learning some stuff right now,
but not fully learning anything. Is it good? Is it bad? I have no idea, but
without tests I think it is really hard to know if you are really learning or
just think you are.

~~~
lesterbuck
If I don't breathe, the environment will "grade" me with death. Now, let's
expand our view just a wee bit and move up seven levels in Maslow's hierarchy.
Do you really think fully actualized people are paying all that much attention
to things like markets? Great poets and writers have labored in obscurity,
died unknown, only to be discovered a hundred years later. Now consider the
unknown numbers of people just as good, still unknown. Did they waste their
lives because "the market" told them they were worthless? Galileo was told,
rather directly, that "the market" did not value his work, to the point of
death threats. Did that in any way devalue his knowledge or understanding?

~~~
wtvanhest
To be honest, I was never a big fan of the concept of fully actualized people.
I always felt like it was perpetrated by those that teach since it fits their
lifestyle. Since that is the only part of the pyramid that is interesting to
most people, I view the entire pyramid as unnecessary to teach at all.

I have no clue what Galileo was truly after, but I would guess it was
scientific discovery and the fame and wealth that could possibly come along
with it. After all, if he truly didn’t care about fame and wealth and he was
only after full actualization he could have just written a bunch of books but
never told anyone or published them.

Why do great poets and writers labor in obscurity, then be discovered hundreds
of years later? I would guess one of two things happen in those cases. 1) they
lack people skill necessary to get their work out, 2) their art was not
appreciated at the time and is for some reason now appreciated.

Since they didn’t benefit from their work, I view them and their ideas as
having zero worth after considering that value that is created far in to the
future is not worth as much as value created today.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Why do great poets and writers labor in obscurity, then be discovered
hundreds of years later?_

There are many scenes in the arts that are far under the radar of both the
mainstream and the arts establishments but nonetheless are very real and
vibrant. Much of art is an act of discovering the depth of your own
perceptions, which is rewarding in itself.

Institutions, the conception of the arts in textbooks -- these are all by-
products of lives lived. They are the mementos and communications of moments.
Real art is in the listener, the viewer, or the creator.

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AUmrysh
My biggest gripe about udacity classes isn't the lack of quality, but the lack
of depth. They offer a great service, and I really do feel like I've learned a
lot by using their courses (especially the ones taught by Thrun), but some of
the courses leave me feeling like the content was a bit thin.

~~~
evoxed
Completely agree. In some cases it can work for you, i.e. an exciting class
doesn't bog you down and lets you use your extra time to _experiment_ , but
there are plenty of classes where it just leaves you wanting more (firing up
the Googles).

Overall though I think one of Udacity's major strongpoints is approachability.
If they can manage to preserve it while continuing to strengthen their
offerings, say with an A and B class for primer and full course respectively,
it seems like they could soon have something to offer for just about everyone.

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TimPC
Universities have to assign professors to courses, and if the quality of
teaching is poor they generally don't pull them. Online education sites are
almost picking the person they feel is best for the job across the 20+
universities they partner.

In a lecture one person answers a professors question, in an online setting
everyone does. Many online programs are now using a standard course format
with deadlines and grading (even the humanities with peer grading). Grading is
also overrated as a learning mechanism, most of the important work done in
grad school isn't graded. For that matter, little of the work one does as a
professional developer is graded. People learn programming faster by writing
projects till they work, getting feedback from a combination of software
pieces (debugger, compiler, etc.) than they do by writing a project for a
university course, to be evaluted by a TA at about 10 minutes a student.

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cafard
Schools cancel classes all the time.

Schools teach bad discrete math classes not infrequently, I suspect. I took a
bad one some years back--the instructor was definitely a sharp guy, but put
very little effort into, sometimes (I suspect) glancing over a chapter before
on the way to the classroom, once just not showing up.

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mdgrech23
This stikes me as somewhat? Udacity put forward a bad class and they did the
right thing and cancelled it. I'm over it and will continue to use their
classes :) Now if the rest of the world would only start accepting Udacity
education in place of accredited school I'd be a happy camper!

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neurotech1
IMO This seems speaks well for them. How many regular universities would
actually cancel a similar math course for low quality?

I've taken classes on Udacity and quite like the platform.

