
Georgia Tech manages to teach a CS degree for $7k - arthurjj
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/upshot/an-online-education-breakthrough-a-masters-degree-for-a-mere-7000.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
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luckydude
I read the whole article a couple of times, I find it hugely interesting. The
part where they wonder if they are taking what could be $57K students and
getting $7K students was fascinating, and obvious in retrospect. The answer is
no, they are getting $7K students where they would not have gotten a $57K
student.

The part about the prof interacting more with the online students was also
interesting.

Color me weird, because the other comments here seem like "meh", but I think
this is a big deal. Have an upvote :)

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MarkMc
"Tests are proctored by a company that locks down a student’s computer
remotely and uses its camera to check for cheating"

I'm surprised that is sufficient.

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bb611
The testing company used appears to be ProctorU, I've used them 4 times for my
own online degree. The controls go well beyond simple camera use, they do a
lot of checking for programs in the background (programatically, not
manually). It can be beaten by a motivated individual, but at the point
significant cheating is an issue for a program, there are larger issues to
address, like "why do our students feel compelled to cheat?" and "why are
tests so valuable that cheating is effective?"

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MarkMc
> there are larger issues to address, like "why do our students feel compelled
> to cheat?" and "why are tests so valuable that cheating is effective?"

I don't quite understand this statement. Tests are so valuable because a
university degree is valuable. If there is cheating, it simply means it is too
easy to cheat. The doesn't seem to be any larger issue.

The simple solution would be to require that candidates sit the test in a room
which is physically supervised by someone who is responsible to the
university.

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bb611
> I don't quite understand this statement. Tests are so valuable because a
> university degree is valuable. If there is cheating, it simply means it is
> too easy to cheat. The doesn't seem to be any larger issue.

University degrees have two levels of value: social signaling ("I have a
degree"), and proof of knowledge & skills. From an instructional standpoint,
social signaling isn't a program goal, it's just an outcome. It's good to
realize that degrees are social signals and that has an effect on who applies
and is successful in these programs, but the instructional aspects of the
program are pretty much entirely focused on knowledge and skills.

So cheating really means that students who are cheating either value the
knowledge and skills less than they should, or that the test is a poor method
of assessing the knowledge and skills. The student values issue is
complicated, and is really more about student selection criteria than anything
else - if the school is only selecting students who want to socially signal,
that's an issue that needs to be addressed in a systematic way.

Conversely, if the issue isn't a social one but rather about skills, the
professor probably isn't doing a good job teaching the material, and there are
plenty of ways to remediate that - lower stakes, higher frequency assessment,
improving instructional materials and time, etc. In general, both of these
problems are pretty well solved by having a more diverse assessment set than
just standardized, proctored tests. Even if you can cheat your way through a 2
hour midterm/final, doing the same for a 2 month long course project is much
harder. I haven't taken any of the GT course,s but based on their udacity
listings (which mirror the MS courses), I would guess appears they are doing
fairly bespoke projects on complex topics (i.e. machine learning), where
cheating is harder to hide.

> The simple solution would be to require that candidates sit the test in a
> room which is physically supervised by someone who is responsible to the
> university.

Beyond the fact that a motivated individual can also cheat on an in-person
exam (something like 60% of US college students admit to cheating sometime in
their college career), that would create a whole other layer of logistics and
cost. It's a lot easier just to have good instruction throughout the program
than to spend huge amounts of time trying to catch people who are willing to
cheat on their tests.

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mmagin
HN post title makes it sound more impressive than it is.

