
12 new universities join Coursera - vibrunazo
http://blog.coursera.org/post/27394575240/12-new-universities-join-coursera
======
_delirium
Interesting. I'm hearing a bunch of stuff from colleagues at these
universities, and it sounds like it may be a bit rough starting up, especially
once it gets to the 2nd semester after these initial offerings.

It took most professors completely by surprise, and it sounds like there may
not be bottom-up buy-in (was completely a management decision). In particular,
at at least one university, profs are now being told that they may be
_required_ to teach a course via Coursera, or at least strongly requested to.
And, the universities don't want to budget this as actual teaching, so it's
just extra work on top of the normal class load: since Coursera courses aren't
credit-hours, they don't give teaching credit. It's supposed to count under
"service" or "outreach", I guess, the way serving on committees or reviewing
papers or doing a CNN interview does. (This part may vary by university.)

Not sure that's a good recipe for high-quality courses via this method. The
advantage of the first few courses is that it was a bottom-up decision by
professors who wanted to do it, and devoted significant time to do it right,
rather than having it assigned to them by management.

~~~
Nrsolis
Personally, this is VERY exciting for me. The biggest challenge I have seen
with traditional universities getting into "distance learning" is that they
are very much focused on delivering a full "classroom" experience rather than
tailoring the experience to the medium.

Example: many course videos are of a "live" class and are repeated for every
semester regardless of the subject. Next to no re-use of course video is seen
from semester to semester. The experience is very much one of time/place-
shifting a class experience.

Also, the focus is almost NEVER on interactivity. As a distance student,
you're VERY much dependent on your professors willingness to read and answer
emails or post in forums.

I was very surprised that MITx had an IRC server set up for the EE class that
were offering. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw they had _hundreds_ of
people in the channel.

So, from my point of view, the biggest shift we are seeing is a willingness of
the brick-and-mortar universities to consider working with a partner that is
going to market their professors and university brand to a very wide audience
and yet enough of an arms-length away that there is little risk to the "brand"
if things go sour. The fact that there are NO for-credit courses is quite
conspicuous and you should expect the universities to attempt to maintain an
implicit separation between MOOCs (massive open online courses) and their
traditional "residential" offerings.

That said, the writing is on the wall: the traditional model doesn't scale and
financial pressure is going to push ALL schools towards this model in some
fashion or they will simply become irrelevant. As I drive up and down I-95 in
the Northeast, one of the things I've noticed is that there are a massive
number of traditional schools advertising on billboards. This NEVER used to
happen and most universities (IMHO) considered it a sign of desperation to
advertise for students as opposed to recruiting.

What we are witnessing is a race developing. Think back to the early days of
Yahoo/Altavista/Google. There are going to be some big winners and some also-
rans in this fight. I'm betting on it.

Full Disclosure: I earned my bachelor's degree from Harvard via their
Extension School and did the majority of my coursework online using their
video delivery platform. I graduated in 2009 at 39 after a LONG absence from
school to chase my fortune on the Internet. Best decision I ever made.

~~~
_delirium
_That said, the writing is on the wall: the traditional model doesn't scale
and financial pressure is going to push ALL schools towards this model in some
fashion or they will simply become irrelevant._

I don't disagree there are all kinds of problems. But how does this initiative
address any of the financial pressures? It does nothing to reduce the cost
structure of universities; in fact it _increases_ the cost structure by adding
another thing their professors and administrators must do, not instead of but
in addition to everything they currently do. And yet, it does not provide any
new revenue streams to pay for that. At least, it doesn't unless there is a
payment from Coursera to universities as part of this deal that hasn't been
announced yet. My guess is that they're hoping to use it as an advertising
loss-leader to attract students and prestige. But that would mean doubling
down even more on the traditional high-tuition model, because that's what's
going to ultimately subsidize the free courses.

Now if they charged for the online courses, I could see that making a
difference in the financial picture. Maybe that's the longer-term plan, for-
pay online courses with Coursera and the university splitting the proceeds.
That would be closer to the Harvard Extension School model you mention.

~~~
UK-AlasGou
It reduces the margin cost for each individual student.

~~~
FrojoS
How so? You don't get a degree from these online courses.

~~~
Nrsolis
You don't get a degree _now_.

Mark my words: in a few years, you'll be able to certify that you passed each
course and you'll get some form of certification for passing a sequence of
courses. It might not be called "BS in CS from MIT" but it'll be looked at the
same way.

------
plinkplonk
Who on HN is taking one or more of these courses?

I signed on for Daphne Koller's Probabilistic Graphical Models and Geoff
Hinton's Neural Networks courses. PGM is supposed to be really tough. I am
planning to take a couple of months off from work.

This new world, where you can learn for free from _the_ experts, is a dream
come true.

I am thinking of blogging my progress (or lack of it, as the case maybe!)

~~~
seiji
_can learn for free from the experts, is a dream come true._

I'm not sure that's what they do though. Learning "from the experts" means
they are there to help you, understand where you're coming from, and correct
you along the way. Just watching a video of someone with recorded slides is
something we could have done 20 years ago.

I was excited about the PGM class, but my interest dropped after the first few
videos (100% comic sans slides, poor video quality, poor audio quality).

Just because you are an expert in some field has zero bearing on your ability
to teach or convey information. I'm not sure a "let's imitate college lecture
formats" site founded by smart people understands that. They fall into the
trap of "smart people can do EVERYTHING!" There are a lot of very smart people
who have negative presentation skills. There are a lot of very smart people
who have excellent presentation skills too.

Solution: have the smart people write the script, but have people excited
about presenting show it to the world.

~~~
GlenAnderson
udacity has gone too far the other way for me. It seems very slick but I
switched off after a couple of minutes because I felt like I was watching a
kids tv show.

~~~
sid6376
I am taking the udacity statistics 101 course and while I agree with the
statement you make, if you visit the forums there are plenty of people having
trouble with the current material itself. The last assignment had a fill in
the blanks proof of the maximum likelihood estimator. Some people were
complaining on the forum that it did not belong to a 101 course. Either ways I
am glad that the course is being offered. It may not be the best introduction
to statistics I get but it at least pushes me into starting to read about
statistics.

~~~
GlenAnderson
That wasn't supposed to be a comment on the material, simply the way it's
being presented. This was a discrete mathematics course, don't have time to
look it up right now. (edit: Relatives are faffing - here it is:
<http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs221/CourseRev/1>)

I personally think there's room for many services like coursera and udacity to
serve different levels of academic experience and expectations.

~~~
sid6376
I realise my initial comment might have come across as more confrontational
than I intended. I definitely agree that there's room for services catering to
different academic experience and exceptions. What I wanted to highlight was
even the hand-holding approach of the udacity instructors might be to cater to
absolute beginners.

------
henrik_w
I've taken two courses from Coursera. This spring I took Design and Anaysis of
Algorithms part 1, and last fall I took Introduction to Databases.

Both were great experiences, and I learnt a lot. However, each course was many
hours of work per week for me. There are easily 10 courses I would like to
take from the current offering, but for me (have a family, working full time),
the biggest constraint is time. Nice though to have the choice once you decide
to take one.

I have written in more detail about my experience with Coursera:
[http://henrikwarne.com/2012/05/08/coursera-algorithms-
course...](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/05/08/coursera-algorithms-course/) and
[http://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-
databases-...](http://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-databases-on-
line-learning-done-well/)

------
waterlesscloud
I'm going to be in classes for the rest of my life. Literally. I love it.

~~~
tomrod
Me too! :D

------
HarrietJones
Great.

I took a Coursera course last month, and despite a couple of weirdnesses, it
was a really enjoyable experience. I don't really get Udacity, but I'm
definitely going to take a couple more of these courses.

It also appears as though they're starting to figure out how to mark essays,
etc without involving huge numbers of lecturers. It's an exciting time for
eduction.

~~~
mapleoin
I'm curious to know how are they marking essays. Can you say more about it?
Links are fine, too.

EDIT: Oh, nevermind, I've found it. It seems that student grade each other's
essays - one student grades three other students.

Look here, under Peer Evaluation: [http://spark-
public.s3.amazonaws.com/fantasysf/Documents/Wor...](http://spark-
public.s3.amazonaws.com/fantasysf/Documents/WorkExpectations.html)

~~~
waterlesscloud
I'm signed up for that particular class and I've been wondering how it was
going to go.

The workload looks reasonably significant, which I'm happy about. I'm a little
skeptical of peer grading of essays, but it's something they've got to figure
out for the future.

Every class I've done so far has had a tiny minority of forum whining about
grades. I'm expecting it to be notably higher in this class, but we'll see how
it goes...

------
UK-AlasGou
One thing UDACITY does better is that it is much more structured. They have
courses that build on each other.

Coursera seems like bunch of interesting courses put together, rather than
structured degree thing.

I think this is because universities see coursera as way increase its
reputation with the public rather an alternative to university lectures.

------
freshfey
This is great and I'm really excited for the new courses. I'm currently taking
Vaccines and Pharmacology from coursera and Statistics from udacity. These
courses help me do exactly what no university let me: Learn about interesting
topics from different areas. This way I can dive into a topic more deeply if
it interests me, and if not I'll just know some basic principles. Jack of all
trades, master of none is absolutely fine for me.

------
moondowner
Looking forward to Odersky's course Functional Programming Principles in
Scala.

<https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun>

~~~
spacemanaki
Kinda interesting that SICP is the first book on the suggested reading list.
Too bad the start date is months away!

~~~
nessus42
Odersky's own Scala book has some large examples that are based on sections of
SICP. E.g., the digital circuit simulator.

------
johnohara
The Coursera website is iterating change faster than it can add new courses.
You can feel it going from 0 - 60 with each new visit. OTOH, it's also
beginning to feel -- big.

Udacity seems more approachable and familiar. Oddly enough, even with 2000+
episodes, so does Khan Academy.

~~~
fhars
And whoever programmed the "sort by start date" function of the new course
overview page that went live yesterday or today should probably take the
introduction to algorithms course :-). It looks like it sorts with a
comparision function that returns a falsy value both for "no date < some date"
and "some date < no date".

------
cpunks
Interesting list. The one surprise is that Caltech choose to go with Coursera
rather than the much more open edX.

------
jray
I see that this course teaches rails <https://www.coursera.org/course/saas>

There is one that teaches Django?

~~~
mahmud
"Software as a Service" is an architecture paradigm: little of it is Rails or
even web specific. In fact, any competent software developer should be able to
get the gist of Rails, Django or flavor of the month framework in the
proverbial weekend.

~~~
UK-AL
Indeed, but the nitty gritty of frameworks can months/years.

~~~
mahmud
The online course doesn't take months/years, so the nitty gritty of Rails is
neither taught, nor is it a requisite for the course: in complete agreement
with my position.

~~~
UK-AL
I wasn't disagreeing...

------
pm90
Its great to see my university (Illinois) finally on this list. We already do
record the more popular courses and make them available to students
(internally its free, but if you're not a student you have to pay for it).
However, it seems like the course that would be most useful (Computer Vision
by Derek Hoeim <http://www.cs.illinois.edu/~dhoiem/>) is not yet on the list.
I wonder whether the university will make that one available because when I
took it there were a lot of external students (usually sponsored by their
companies) and I'm sure the Uni made a lot of money from it

~~~
tikhonj
There's a computer vision class offered already:
<https://www.coursera.org/course/vision>.

~~~
pm90
I can't believe Jitendra Malik himself is teaching this! He is an
extraordinary researcher in computer vision, and I would definitely like to
attend this. Thanks!

------
TimPC
The exciting part of this for me is seeing that some of the intro courses are
taught by top senior lecturers rather than just professors. I've always found
some of the best learning experiences for material that isn't heavily
connected to research comes from people who's careers are in teaching rather
than research. One of my knocks on Udacity was the whole PhD required approach
to teaching intro CS, many of the best lecturers in first year CS don't have
PhD's.

------
vineet
The Gamification course (<https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification>) seems
to be a great resource.

It is one of those topics that there is not too much helpful material online -
so I am looking forward to it.

------
klipt
I'm curious - why isn't UC Berkeley mentioned, but this course, taught by a
Berkeley professor is listed on the right?
<https://www.coursera.org/course/qcomp>

------
hekker
This is awesome! Signed up for Computational Investing and Dan Ariely's class
on Behavioral Economics.

------
VinzO
Anyone knows if such course exists for video game development?

------
cow
Great,that is awesome.

