
Will online classes make professors extinct? - esalazar
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/opinion/wheeler-tenured-professors
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jjoonathan
Does anyone have numbers indicating the extent to which tuition subsidizes
research funding or vice versa? I (and most HNers, I'd assume) wouldn't shed
many tears over seeing the extraordinarily exploitative and inefficient
institution of college education go through disruption. My experience has been
that online lectures, course material, and forum discussions are more than up
to the task of replacing their physical counterparts (pause+rewind is a killer
feature, and the discussions in online forums are miles above anything I
experienced in section/recitation). Hands-on labs are about the only thing
that ought to have a marginal cost in this day and age. But I hate to think
what disruption could do to academia.

There are a handful of big (sometimes existential!) problems lurking on the
horizon which absolutely rely on academia because incremental progress isn't
amenable to monetization. I'm most worried about the drug industry. It's
imploding (google "inverse moore's law"), leaving the basic science required
to get over the slump in the hands of academics, and I don't want to wait 50
years for high-efficiency gene therapy (or let China grab the market) just
because the research is tied to an outdated educational system. I know there's
very little anyone can do about it, but I need to know the extent to which
college tuition subsidizes said research before I can form a solid opinion on
disruption.

EDIT: Got off my ass and googled it. The NSF estimated in 1994 that 9.5% of
research funding comes from tuition [1]. I would like to formally submit one
internet-vote in favor of disruption, along with one internet vote to increase
research funding to compensate :)

[1]
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm)

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djf1
You mention pause+rewind as a killer feature. Another nice feature is the
ability to watch at a faster or slower pace (I usually watch 1.5x). These
conveniences have made it such that I strongly prefer watching taped lecture
to physically attending class. Add to that the fact that you can almost always
get a faster response from posting in an online forum (often Piazza for my
Stanford CS classes) than attending overcrowded and understaffed office hours.
Most of my education has already moved online.

Even if online class doesn't make professors extinct, I think it will
certainly make physical class time a thing of the past.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yes! 1.5x is fantastic! It solves the impedance mismatch inherent in human
speech. 90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the
remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower. If you have to listen at 1x
speed you are either bored and sleepy or falling further and further behind,
sometimes both. The pause button solves the falling-behind problem and 1.5x
speed solves the boredom problem.

~~~
seehafer
"90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining
10% takes 300% of available brainpower."

I'd argue that's the result of poor communication, not any deficiency in human
speech generally. Granted, it's very very hard to construct something with the
right level of addressable information at every moment. But when it's done
right it is glorious. I think one of the things people implicitly recognize in
good communicators (not necessarily good orators, but good communicators) is
their ability to tailor what they're saying in this way.

~~~
jjoonathan
Variance in the backgrounds of your audience and variance in the physical
state of your audience (tired, sick, etc) places a strict upper bound on how
well you can communicate. If one student isn't experiencing an impedance
mismatch, you can probably find another that is, unless the class is extremely
small and homogeneous. Pause+rewind is robust to these problems.

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chewxy
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says NO.

Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the
completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this
is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying.

So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article:
Here's a library, now go get knowledge.

Learning, IMO doesn't happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions
of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not
necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And
of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer
to the question, No

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

~~~
ams6110
It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something
of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had
correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost
any topic under the sun.

Online makes that easier (you don't have to leave the house, or type up papers
and mail them in) but fundamentally, online education still requires a lot of
self-discipline.

If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up
institutions of education. The real problem with undergraduate university
environments right now is that the perceived value has fallen dramatically as
tuition rates have skyrocketed. The universities and providers of easy
financial aid are to blame for that.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something
> of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had
> correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost
> any topic under the sun.

MOOCs differ from just reading a book on important aspects:

1\. You have a teacher break down the content for you

2\. You have graded assignments, which helps giving confidence you're
absorbing the content

3\. Interactive media (video, software) can be a more effective media to
explain certain concepts

4\. You have interaction with other students learning the same subject

> If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built
> up institutions of education.

Back in the day, your only chance of having access to knowledge was at
institutions, so I'm afraid this is more of a tradition than anything else.
Remember that the church was once the source of knowledge too. Nowadays
though, people aren't going to college for knowledge as much as for filling a
pre-requisite to enter the job market.

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eshvk
Online courses are cute. The stanford machine learning course is a watered
down travesty that doesn't compare to Andrew's original material out there.
There is a reason for that too. The harder the courses get, the more it is
nice to have an actual person to talk to about this shit. My real analysis
class made sense only because I was able to talk to the professor after class
and understand why I should care about open balls or closed balls.

Similarly from a systems perspective, my OS class was the hardest C.S. class
that I took. There was very little that I remember from the lectures but the
most I took away was during designing shit and getting stuck and then going
back and talking to the professor and brainstorming. This is stuff that
inherently doesn't scale well to millions of people.

~~~
yetanotherphd
That course isn't representative. I don't know the thinking behind it, (it was
one of their earlier MOOC courses) but there are many courses with much better
and harder content.

Of course it is better to have a real person, but not everyone has that
luxury, or their real professors are no good.

~~~
eshvk
Sure. Learning from data (caltech) is a good course. But all I got from the
course was to go pick up the book and learn this stuff by working through the
problem set. And I have a pretty decent linear algebra and probability
background. Imagine if you are getting into this stuff new (which is not an
unreasonable assumption considering the diverse background of ML folks), this
would be brutal. Math is a contact, no holds barred sport where some hand
holding initially is pretty damn nice.

Also, I did some schooling in the third world and I am never going to come out
and say that someone putting material for a course online is a bad thing. I am
just annoyed by this idea that a bunch of online videos is a superior or
equally effective replacement to an education at MIT or Stanford.

~~~
ilyanep
The online problem sets for the Caltech course aren't what you get in real
life when the course is being actively offered, and also it was a pretty
basic/easy course. That's not to say there aren't other hard classes online or
that Yaser isn't great at teaching, but yeah...

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calinet6
I've taken a couple Coursera and other self-led courses and it's not a good
fit for me. I recognize my deficiency at self-directed learning, and I imagine
many _many_ people share it. I just can't learn that way.

A good chunk of people will require social, interactive, and hands-on learning
led by people to whom they can listen and converse. Until that experience is
sufficiently reproduced online (and surely even after that), "professors" will
not be out of a job.

Also the title is hyperbole.

~~~
bphogan
I agree with you 100%.

I teach online and hybrid (part face to face, part online) courses. My
students tell me they actively choose one or the other format. Some students
cannot learn online and appreciate the ability to interact. I try to use the
class time we have effectively, to demonstrate, to coach, to give feedback on
their work. I save the "lectures" for their own time.

I've taken online courses from some pretty bright people and never felt that
they were a good fit because they were simply lectures. I don't learn by
lecture. I learn by doing and getting feedback. I do horribly in "traditional"
instructor-focused courses, AKA "lecture/test" courses. I do very well in
courses where I can apply things.

One thing I think is great about online education is the ability to reach a
lot of people. But one thing that's terrible about it, in my humble opinion,
is that it's harder to connect with students. My online classes have a cap of
27 students. I can manage a couple of courses like that. But in order to
manage courses of 200-2000 people, I just would be putting up content and
videos, and I'm sorry, but that's not teaching. That's nothing different than
screencasts or books. If I get assessed, I want detailed feedback. I want to
ask questions.

And if those questions are being answered by a support staff, then there goes
the argument of "learning from the best and brightest" that MOOCs advocate.

I love teaching students hundreds or thousands of miles away. I don't think my
role is going away any time soon, simply because I've evolved how I teach. The
ones who should be worried are the ones who teach from the textbook and spend
64 hours per course lecturing from the front of the room.

[edit to clarify reply]

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molsongolden
"Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas
of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of
special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or
the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because
he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and
meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural
sciences, i.e. by acquiring "know-how." That study has its own value which I
am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work
in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of
life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair." \- E.F.
Schumacher (from his essay The Greatest Resource - Education)

This quote is part a defense of the humanities and liberal arts as essential
for presenting ideas of who, what, and why we are.

Schumacher makes a strong distinction between education and training and I
lean towards categorizing MOOCs as the latter. While they may achieve wider
credentialed status, they will not and should not replace traditional
educational institutions. Pricing, degree structure, and allocation of
resources (professor pay vs. recreational amenities) might all need to be
looked at but the mentor-pupil dynamic is essential to the liberal arts.

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sanskritabelt
I've taken several coursera courses and maybe the good ones are hiding in
there somewhere but I'm really unimpressed by the ones I've seen.

~~~
Simucal
Which courses have you taken? I've completed the Machine Learning course and
I'm currently taking Cryptography 1 from Coursera. They both have been great.

~~~
jjoonathan
Machine Learning, Drug Development, Nuclear Energy, VLSI: Logic to Layout,
Computer Architecture, and Analytical Chemistry were all somewhere between
"good" and "great" in my book.

ML and NE were aimed at non-specialists and weren't rigorous. Maybe that's the
objection?

~~~
sanskritabelt
That's part of it, yeah, lots of courses out there but they tend to be things
like survey courses, etc. Some of this is that the video content turns out to
be the equivalent of only a 1 or 2 credit course.

~~~
jjoonathan
It's unfair to criticize Coursera for having survey courses if they also have
deep courses, which they do. It would be nice if they had more, but that's not
really a criticism.

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sieva
Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take
over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as
technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's
population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will
always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too
many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention
the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.

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gdahl
Will high quality textbooks and the printing press make the medieval
university go extinct?

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ryanthejuggler
No more than ebooks have wiped out printing.

