
Free Education Initiative - zoowar
http://www.saylor.org/
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catone
It's admirable to attempt to collect free resources and organize them in a way
that provides a natural progression for subject matter mastery, but essays and
lectures does not a college education make. For that you need teachers and
peers to discuss the information, to frame it and present it in ways necessary
for different types of learners to grasp it, to evaluate your understanding,
to challenge you to think about things in new ways.

For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring
you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that
rule).

Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more
available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to
imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just
devalues the work that teachers do.

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cj
Then again, I'd say at least half of students in a typical college class could
care less about what they're learning.

If someone has the initiative to go through videos and essays, chances are
they're learning more than the bottom 50% in the equivalent college class.

I think initiatives like this could eventually offer valid alternatives to the
'college _degree_ ', but not a 'college _education_ '. A _degree_ is what you
get from mastering an area of studying. A college _education_ includes
additional social and professional skills, which I think is what you're
concerned with these initiatives not addressing.

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msluyter
I think it's an interesting idea, but I went and took a look at the course on
Web Programming and found it somewhat lacking. For instance, the section on
HTTP links to the W3C documentation on POST/GET/etc... which is ok, but very
dry reading and, IMHO, possibly too abstract and confusing to someone who
didn't already have some experience writing webapps. I feel that the course
needs more overall "glue" binding some of the concepts together. For example,
there's a tutorial about PHP/Ruby, but it seems to reference materials from
some other college course (that I couldn't locate).

Overall, it just didn't seem to hang together well.

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noelsequeira
Breaking down the vision:

 _This website will serve as a zero-cost alternative to those that lack the
resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions_

I completely agree with the observation that the duct-taping of a few, loosely
connected resources to construct an authoritative syllabus / disrupt the
existing education system through an online network of autodidacts and mentors
is flawed in its very premise. I'm inclined to believe, though, that we're
looking at an an early iteration and that the Saylor Foundation's initiative
will evolve as feedback pours in.

 _and, if they are willing, a complement to mainstream education providers._

This seems to be the more practical component of the vision. My personal take:
education will not be disrupted by applications that seek to uproot the brick
and mortar educational establishment. Rather, platforms will emerge to augment
the existing teaching / learning process and help students seek guidance when
they need it.

I think the Khan Academy has pretty much set the bar for what an online
'education augmentation platform', if you were, should start out looking like,
and the Saylor Foundation would do well to emulate them.

That said, the world really needs a central, well maintained repository for
educational content at the college level, so I hope this initiative succeeds.

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chad_oliver
I really like the idea of the General Education Program. In fact, I think
you'll have the most impact and do the most good by focusing _only_ on this
program.

There are many different websites that do what you do, i.e. providing a
college education online for free. Khan Academy targets the technical subjects
(and a younger demographic), opencourseware has thousands of lectures online,
etc. To put it bluntly, if I want to learn biology or computer science, you've
got nothing that I can't get anywhere else.

But listen to this quote from the your website: "The purpose of the General
Education Program is to educate students about what we—as human beings—know
about ourselves ... the curriculum will help you prepare to be reflective,
confident, productive citizen of your local, national, and global
communities". This is pure gold; I haven't seen this anywhere else. This is
not education for the sake of getting a job, but rather for the sake of
_becoming a well-rounded person_.

This program isn't finished yet, but once you can complete it and polish it, I
think this will be a huge resource.

I can't speak for everyone, but if you build it, I'll come.

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spacemanaki
I was disappointed to find a pretty vanilla looking Java 101 as the Intro to
CS course. I also wonder about the utility of developing a curriculum from the
ground up by linking to articles and readings rather than building on existing
material like MIT's OCW etc. Starting with that material and fleshing it out
and filling in the gaps would be more effective I think.

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Joakal
It's not mentioned but [cost] online courses offer:

1) Slides with custom content for example a joke of what happens if everyone
decided to lower their own wages. Considering that the pdf contents are dry,
slides win in this aspect.

2) Community. Like-minded people discussing the course and how to solve it.

3) Peer/authority review. The teacher or a partner reviews the work done by
the person.

Optional) Programmable quizs. Those generate pseudo random questions (Most
easy for math-like courses).

Optional) As part of doing a course, have the student generate questions and
answers (Best for non-math-like courses as per above). This is the student's
contribution back to the foundation to continue to provide more information.

~~~
sandal
We do a large amount of what you're describing here at Ruby Mendicant
University: <http://university.rubymendicant.com/>

It's Ruby based right now but really about software development in general.
Hopefully in the future we'll expand to be inclusive of other languages.

